/ 






Glass 
Book 




."P'a.fc 



GPO 



c 







s 



WORKS BY MR. PAGET. 



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Contents: — 1. Sowing and Reaping. 2. Forge tfulness of God. 
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16. On Sowing beside all Waters. 17. The Promises an Encouragement 
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"No man ought to be offended that Sermons are not 
like curious inquiries after new nothings, but pursuances 
of old truths." — Bp. Jeremy Taylor. 



THE 



LIVING AND THE DEAD: 



A COURSE OF 



PRACTICAL SERMONS 



ON 



Sfje 3SurtaI J^rbice. 



BY 

FRANCIS E. PAGET, M. A., 

RECTOR OF ELFORD. 



"Sermons are arguments against us, unless they make us better; and 
no sermon is received as it ought unless it makes us quit a vice, or be in 
love with virtue ; unless we suffer it, in some instance or degree, to do 
the work of God upon our souls." — Bp, Jeremy Taylor. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

JOHN THOMAS WALTERS. 
FRANCIS AND JOHN RIVINGTON, LONDON. 



MDCCCXLV. 



TO 

THE REVEREND WILLIAM LEGGE, B.A., 

RECTOR OF ASHTEAD, 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED, 

IN GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

OF MULTIPLIED OBLIGATIONS 

IN BOYHOOD, YOUTH, AND MANHOOD, 

AND OF THE STEDFAST FRIENDSHIP OF 

FIVE AND TWENTY YEARS. 



^nalgsts 
OF THE OFFICE OF BURIAL 

(From Dean Comber's Companion to the Temple. ) 





I. In the 




way, viz., 




sentences of 


This 


Scripture to 


Office 


excite us to 


maybe 




divided 




into 


II; In the 


three 


Church, 


parts 


being larger 


accord- 


portions of 


ing to * 


Scripture, 


the 


designed, 


several 




places 




where 




it is per- 




formed 


III. At the 


viz., 


grave, 




when we are 




entertained 




with 



The 



of 



LFaath Jjobxix^&c. 

2. Patience 1 Timothy vi. 7. 

3. Thankfulness Job i. 21. 



1. To elevate our devo- 
tion by pious medita- 
tions and prayers on 
this occasion : 

2. To inform our un- 
derstanding as to the 
certainty and the man- 
ner of the resurrection. 



In the C Psalm xxxix. 
Psalms : ( Psalm xc. 



In the ( 1 Cor, xii. from ver. 
Lesson : / 20 to the end. 



1. The preparatory meditation . . 

2. The solemn interment 

3. The consolation annexed from 

4. The 



conclud- 
ing devo- 
tions, 
consist- 
in? of 



1. The 

Prayers 
which are 



1. General, 

2. Particular, 
and suited 

to this occa- 
sion, 



c Man that is born of 
t a woman, &c. 
C Forasmucn as it 
(.hath pleased, &c. 

Revelations xiv. 13. 



C The lesser Litany. 
c The Lord's Prayer. 



The first Collect. 
The second Collect 



2. The final blessing, 



("The grace of our 
(.Lord, &c. 



. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 



LECTURE T. 

ON BURIAL, CONSIDERED AS A RELIGIOUS RITE. 

Genesis iii. 19. 

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou 
return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou 
taken : for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt 
thou return 

LECTURE II. 

ON THE PRIVILEGE OF CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 



Romans xiv. 7, 8, 9. 

For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to 
himself. For whether we live, we live unto the 
Lord ; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord : 
whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. 
For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and re- 
vived, that He might be the Lord both of the dead 

and living , 19 

b 



Till CONTENTS. 

LECTURE III. 

FAITH, PATIENCE, THANKFULNESS, THE GRACES OF 
BEREAVEMENT. 

Job i. 21. 

Page. 

The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed 

be the name of the Lord 41 

LECTURE IV. 

THE DAILY SPECTACLE OF MORTALITY. 

Psalm xxxix. 6. 
Verily every man living is altogether vanity .... 59 

LECTURE V. 

THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, THE PROOF AND 
GUARANTEE OF OUR OWN. 
1 Corinthians xv. 21, 22. 
Since by man came death, by man came also the resur- 
rection of the dead. .For as in Adam all die, even 
so in Christ shall all be made alive 77 

LECTURE VI. 

THE END OF ALL TIME- PART. I. 
1 CoTtlNTHIANS XV. 51, 52. 

Behold I shew you a mystery ; we shall not all sleep, 
but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the 
twinkling of an eye, at the last trump ; for the 
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised 
incorruptible, and we shall be changed 93 

LECTURE VII. 

THE END OF ALL TIME. PART II. 
1 Corinthians xv. 51, 52. 
Behold, I shew you a mystery ; we shall not all sleep, 
but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the 
twinkling of an eye, at the last trump : for the 
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised 
incorruptible, and we shall be changed 109 



CONTENTS. IX 

LECTURE VIII. 

CHRISTIAN STEDFASTNESS THE REWARD OF CHRISTIAN 
OBEDIENCE. 

1 Corinthians xv. 58. 

Page 

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, immove- 
able, always abounding in the work of the Lord, 
forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not ; n 
vain in the Lord '. 125 

LECTURE IX. 

DEATH TEMPORAL, AND DEATH ETERNAL. 

Job xiv. 1, 2. 

Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full 
of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is 
cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and con- 
tinuethnot 141 

LECTURE X. 

EARTH TO EARTH, ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST. 

S. Matthew viii. 22. 
Let the dead bury their dead 158 

LECTURE XL 

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 

Revelation xiv, 13. 

And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, 
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from 
henceforth : Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may 
rest from their labours, and thei~ works do follow 
them 175 



X CONTENTS. 

LECTURE XII. 

THE LORD'S PRAYER A MANUAL FOR THE MOURNER. 

Page. 

S. Matthew vi. 10. 
Thy Will be done in earth as it is in heaven . . . .193 

LECTURE XIII. 

THE RISEN SAVIOUR THE LORD OF HELL AND OF 
DEATH. 

Revelation i. 17, 18. 

I am the First and the Last: I am He that liveth and 
was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, 
Amen ; and have the keys of hell and of death . . 209 

LECTURE XIV. 

THE CHRISTIAN'S DELIVERANCE BY DEATH A SOURCE 
OF THANKFULNESS TO SURVIVORS. 

Philippians iii. 20, 21. 

For our conversation is in heaven ; from whence also we 
look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ : "Who 
shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned 
like unto His glorious body, according to the work- 
ing whereby He is able even to subdue all things 
unto Himself . - -.' 225 

LECTURE XV. 

THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE NUMBER OF THE 
ELECT. 

Revelation xxii. 20. 

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come 

quickly ; Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus . . 242 



CONTENTS. XI 

LECTURE XVI. 

THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD 
CONSIDERED. 

2 Timothy i. 18. 

Page- 

The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the 

Lord in that day 26 1 

LECTURE XVII. 

THE CHRISTIAN RESURRECTION FROM THE DEATH OF 
SIN UNTO A LIFE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

Colossians iii. 1, 2, 3. 

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which 
are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of 
God. Set your affection on things above, not on 
things of the earth. For ye are dead, and your life 
is hid with Christ in God 289 

LECTURE XVIII. 

ON THE MUTUAL RECOGNITION OF THE BLESSED. 

1 Thessalonians iv. 13, 14. 

But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, con- 
cerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, 
even as others which have no hope. For if we 
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them 
also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. 307 

LECTURE XIX. 

THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

S. Matthew xxv. 34. 
Come, ye Blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom 

prepared for you from the foundation of the world . 325 

b 2 



Xll CONTENTS. 

LECTURE XX. 

THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION CONSIDEEED WITH 
REFERENCE TO THE BURIAL OFFICE. 

2 Corinthians xiii, 14. 

Pa^e. 

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, 
and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with 
you all. Amen 243 



PREFACE. 



If an apology be needed for the appearance of this 
book, the writer would desire to plead it in the words 
of " a true son" and pious confessor of the Church of 
England, whose unalterable allegiance to that Church 
it is his heart's desire, through good report and bad 
report, to imitate, and whose whole life was a consis- 
tent following out of the belief which he expressed in 
death, that our Holy Mother is " both in doctrine and 
worship agreeable to the Word of God, and in the 
most material points of both, conformable to the faith 
and practice of the godly Churches of Christ in the 
primitive and purer times." 1 

" Controversies, I confess," said Bishop Sanderson 
* ' are necessary, the tongues necessary, Histories neces- 
sary, Philosophy and the arts necessary, other knowledge 
of all sorts necessary in the Church : for Truth must be 
maintained, Scripture-phrases opened, Heresie confuted, 

1 See Bishop Sanderson's Will,. in his Life by Izaak Walton, 



XIV PREFACE. 

the mouths of Adversaries stopped, Schisms and Novel- 
ties suppressed. But when all is done, Positive and 
Practic Divinity is it must bring us to heaven : that is 
it must poise our judgments, settle our consciences, 
direct our lives, mortifie our corruptions, encrease our 
graces, strengthen our comforts, save our souls. Hoc 
opus, hoc studium : there is no study to this, none so 
well worth labour as this, none that can bring so much 
profit to others, nor therefore so much glory to God, nor 
therefore so much comfort to our own hearts, as this. 
' This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou 
affirm constantly,'' (saith S. Paul to Titus) ' that they 
which have believed in God might be careful to maintain 
good works : these things are good, and prof table unto 
men' You cannot do more good unto the Church of 
God, you cannot more profit the people of God, by 
your gifts; than by pressing effectually these two 
great points, Faith and good Works. These are good 
and profitable unto men." 1 

" Controversies are necessary ;" even as there must 
be heresies among us, that they which are approved 
may be made manifest. And when forms of error are 
developed, they must be combated and exposed by 
those whose office it is, as shepherds of the Lord's 
flock, to guard His sheep from the approach of wolves 
and robbers. 

And certainly, if ever controversy was necessary, and 
if ever there was need that it should be carried to its 
issue steadily and unshrinkingly, and without reference 

1 Bishop Sanderson's Works, Sermon iii. ad clerum; Edit. 1686. pp. 57, 58. 



PREFACE. XV 

to the fears or favour of men, it is at this present time, 
when (alas, that we have lived to see the day !) some 
whom we have loved and honoured heretofore as the 
most devoted and faithful of the Church's sons have 
withdrawn themselves from her communion, and lapsed 
into schism; when, through the insidious attacks of 
Romanists on the one hand, and the more open vio- 
lence of a dark and malignant Puritanism on the other, 
and a reckless spirit of latitudinarianism pervading all 
classes of the community, it is evident that no means 
will be left untried whereby the corruption and down- 
fall of all that is Catholic in the Church of England may 
be effected. 

But controversy is a miserable thing, — miserable 
alike to the victor and the vanquished ; and most of us, 
it is to be presumed, have seen enough of late to satisfy 
us that, when men begin to be controversialists, they 
run no small risk of ceasing to be Christians, and that 
this is pre-eminently the case where, from a morbid 
thirst after excitement, individuals rush unbidden into 
the conflict, who are neither compelled thereto by pro- 
fessional duty, nor are fitted for it by previous study 
or habits of self-discipline. 

In proportion, therefore, as controversies are neces- 
sary and exciting, is it desirable that, when they are 
rife, men's minds should be directed to what Bishop 
Sanderson calls "positive and practic divinity,'" — to the 
quiet, earnest discharge of those duties of every-day 
life which are so apt to be neglected or forgotten by 
those who allow themselves to be embroiled in the 



XVI PREFACE. 

heats of party-discussion ; and especially to sober 
reflection on the transitoriness of this present life ; the 
vanity of its struggles and triumphs, and of the fame 
and favour of the world ; and that to fear God and keep 
His commandments, is our foremost duty. 

With this object it seems well, at the present time, 
to multiply the number of practical treatises, to provide 
wholesome food for the minds of various classes of 
readers, and to put forth books in which sound prin- 
ciples are not made matter of discussion, but taken for 
granted, and the discharge of neglected duties not so 
much defended as insisted on. 

The increasing demand for such works is, amid our 
many troubles, a cheering sign of the times, and affords 
a reasonable ground of hope that there are many 
among us who are earnestly striving to realize those 
principles in their daily practice, the truth of which 
they admit in theory. 

To such persons the present volume is offered in the 
hope that a series of plain discourses, on some of the 
most important doctrines of our holy Faith, delivered to 
a flock, as yet, blessed be God, not torn asunder by 
controversies or schism, but following with willing 
minds the teaching of the Church as developed in her 
formularies, may not be unacceptable or worthless. 

It is only necessary to add, that the writer has taken 
whatever suited his purpose from the works of the 
standard Ritualists of our Church, and that he is anxious 
to express his special obligations to the Rev. W. 



PREFACE. XV11 

Greswell's Commentary on the Order for the Burial of 
the Dead. 

It may be also as well to mention that the Lecture 
in which the Question of Prayer for the Dead has been 
considered, has been added with a view of rendering 
the present volume more complete ; but formed no part 
of the series originally delivered from the pulpit. 



F. E. P. 



Feast of All Saints, 
1845. 



LECTURES. 

LECTURE I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

©n ISurial, consftftrttr as a Religious Utte. 

Genesis iii. 19. 

"IN THE SWEAT OF THY FACE SHALT THOU EAT BREAD, 
TILL THOU RETURN UNTO THE GROUND; FOR OUT OF IT 
WAST THOU TAKEN: FOR DUST THOU ART, AND UNTO 
DUST SHALT THOU RETURN." 

In these words we hear the sentence of our 
race, — the most awful part of that curse pro- 
nounced on Adam, when, by his disobedience, 
he had drawn upon himself, and upon all who 
in time to come should be the issue of his 
loins, the just vengeance of an offended God. 
He, who had been created in the image of 
his Maker, had marred himself and the object 



2 CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 

for which he was created; he had become 
corrupted and polluted ; had made a covenant 
with Satan, and brought sin into the world, 
and thus had infected and tainted the whole 
material creation around him. The very 
pressure of his foot spread contagion, for the 
earth on which he trod was rendered sterile 
by it; "the ground" was " cursed for his 
sake," and thorns and thistles were hence- 
forth to smother and choke up those fruits of 
the soil which hitherto had sprung up spon- 
taneously. And against himself the decree 
went forth that labour and pain were to be 
the future companions of his existence ; that 
by the sweat of his brow he should win the 
bread which he should eat in sorrow ; that 
exhaustion should follow labour, and decay 
should be the successor of pain, till his days 
on earth should be brought to a close, and 
the remainder of his sentence be inflicted by 
that severance of the soul from the body by 
temporal death, which was yet but a feeble 
type of that more awful severance of the dis- 
embodied soul from the presence of God, in 
which penalty lay the sting of death eternal. 
" In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 6 

bread, till thou return unto the ground ; for 
out of it wast thou taken : for dust thou art, 
and unto dust shalt thou return." 

And so at his appointed time Adam died ; 
and so from Adam's clay to our own, and from 
our own even to the end of the world, all 
men have died, or will die, — every man in his 
own order. ' r By one man sin entered into 
the world, and death by sin, and so death 
passed upon all men, for that all have sin- 
ned." High and low, rich and poor, one with 
another, the exaction of the sentence has 
been universal, — the body in which men have 
sinned, that same body has been sown "in 
weakness," " in dishonour," "in corruption." 
Whether in infancy or childhood, in man- 
hood or old age, sooner or later, the sum- 
mons has gone forth, and man has been borne 
to his long home : the dust has returned to 
the earth as it was : and the spirit has re- 
turned to God Who gave it. 

Yes, though as innumerable as the multi- 
tudes who have died, have been their several 
modes of death; though of myriads of our 
race the fire hath had his part, and the deep 
waters theirs ; though the bones of myriads 



CHRISTIAN RURIAL. 



have been bleached under scorching suns, or 
entombed amid arctic snows, or scattered and 
dissipated in vapours by the winds of heaven, 
yet sooner or later, by some process or other, 
the disintegrated forms have been resolved 
into their original element ; — earth to earth, 
ashes to ashes, dust to dust. " Dust thou 
art, and unto dust shalt thou return." 

And hence the feeling seems to have be- 
come natural to man, that the earth was the 
fitting place in which to deposit that vessel 
of clay which the soul had quitted ; — that 
when it was needful to remove the dead out 
of sight, lest nature should be outraged by 
witnessing the loathsome process of corrup- 
tion, earth was the meetest element where- 
with earth should be mingled, — that we 
should, as it has been expressed, "return to the 
embrace of our first mother." 

And though there have been nations who 
committed their departed friends to the 
funeral pile instead of the grave, the motive 
which led to this act was rather the result of 
refinement than of natural feeling. To them 
death brought no thoughts of a future resur- 
rection of the body, and, therefore, they were 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 



glad to adopt a plan by which the less perish- 
able parts of those whom they had loved 
while living, might still be preserved to 
them, and when consigned to the funeral 
urn, might still be the visible representative 
of the once living object on which their at- 
tachment had been concentrated. 

The natural feeling, has ever been that 
the grave is the fitting receptacle for the 
dead, and that they who die should be 
buried. It is true that Scripture has given 
us no record of the entombment of those who 
died before the flood, and the wild legend 
which some of you may, perhaps, have fallen 
in with, that the bones of Adam were taken 
into the ark by Noah, and buried by him 
after the waters of the deluge had abated, 
upon that very mountain of Moriah or Cal- 
vary, — and, upon the self-same spot, in which 
both Abraham raised the knife to slay his 
son, and where, in after-times, the Cross of 
Christ was reared, 1 bears on its face the 



1 See Poole's Synopsis ; Gen. xxii. 2. " Mons Moria in 
plures calles dissectus erat : in una parte erat Sion, in qua arx 
David, juxta quam templum extructum. Alia pars extra 
urbem mansit posteaque dicta est Mons Calvarise, in quo tarn. 

B 2 



D CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 

stamp of fiction. Yet, if we find no intima- 
tions in the Bible that the Fathers before the 
flood buried their dead, at least we find no- 
thing to militate against the supposition ; 
and when, in after-times, we read of Abra- 
ham's earnest entreaty to the children of 
Heth, "I am a stranger and a sojourner with 
you : give me a possession of a burying-place 
with you, that I may bury my dead out of 
my sight;" and remember who they were 
who were laid to their last repose in the cave 
of Machpelah, we may, I think, fairly pre- 
sume that the custom of the Patriarchs was 
identical with that adopted by the father of 
mankind ; and that when he who first 
brought death into the world, looked his last 
upon his dead son's face, he was taught by 
the voice of nature, or, it may be, by a direct 
communication from on high, to lay his mur- 
dered Abel in that ground from which the 
voice of his blood cried for vengeance. 

But, be this as it may, we cannot forget 

Isaac quam Christum immolatos fuisse docit Hieronymus ex 
traditione Hebreeorum." The story about Adam is as old as 
the 4th century, being alluded to by Epiphanius, l.i. §. 33. See 
also Quarterly Review. Vol. 21, p. 361. 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 



the earnest injunctions of Jacob, as he lay 
upon his dying bed, nor the strong feeling 
with which he gave his sanction to a cus- 
tom, which, it is evident, had then generally 
obtained. " I," said he unto his sons, "am 
to be gathered unto my people : bury me 
with my fathers in the cave that is in the 
field of Ephron the Hittite . - . . There they 
buried Abraham and Sarah his wife ; there 
they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife ; and 
there I buried Leah." 

Now, as we have the warrant of S. Paul, 
for believing that it was "by faith" that 
Joseph followed the example of his father, and 
"gave commandment concerning his oones ;" 
and, as we have the same Apostle's testi- 
mony to the fact that the Patriarchs "all 
died in faith, not having received the pro- 
mises, but having seen them afar off, and 
were persuaded of them, and embraced them, 
and confessed that they were strangers and 
pilgrims on the earth ;" we are forcibly led 
to the conclusion, that as they did not look 
only to transitory promises, so they committed 
their dead to the grave in sure and certain 
hope ; and that the language of Job, (who 



8 CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 

was, perhaps, a cotemporary of Abraham,) 
was that of the father of the faithful himself, 
fi I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that 
He shall stand at the latter-day upon the 
earth : and though after my skin worms des- 
troy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see 
God : Whom I shall see for myself, and mine 
eyes shall behold and not another." 

Thus then, Hope had already stretched 
her shadowing wings over the grave, and the 
feeling grew and strengthened among those 
who lived the life of faith, that the mantle of 
earth would not shroud for ever the remains 
of those who were laid in her bosom. And 
still, aj time passed on, the intimations of 
the might/truth about to be revealed grew 
clearer and clearer, and the aspirations of 
those who waited for the consolation of Israel 
became more intense, as the voices of the 
Prophets were heard declaring that an hour 
was coming when the Lord God should 
" swallow up death in victory," and " wipe 
away tears from off all faces ;" when He 
would bid the dry bones to live ; when He 
would " cause breath to enter into them," 
and "lay sinews upon them, and cover them 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 9 

with skin, and put breath in them;" when 
He would say to the dead, " O my people, I 
will open your graves, and cause you to come 
up out of your graves ;" and when He would 
ransom them from the power of the grave, 
and redeem them from death, by pronouncing 
his sentence against the enemies of our race, 
" O death, I will be thy plagues : O grave, I 
will be thy destruction." 1 

Nor were such hopes indulged in vain ; 
for at length, in the fulness of time, that 
event took place by which the penalty of 
Adam's transgression was paid ; the Eternal 
Son of God assumed man's nature, and in 
that nature, for the Atonement of our sins, 
was crucified, died, and was buried : in that 
nature He rose again from the dead : He as- 
cended into heaven, and sitteth at the right 
hand of God the Father Almighty, from 
whence He shall come to judge the quick 
and the dead. 

From that hour the grave was known to 
be the gate of life ; a calm and holy place in 
which the weary flesh could rest in hope, 
even though it saw corruption ; and the faded 

1 See Isa. xxv. 8 ; Ezek. xxxvii. 5, 6, 12 ; Hosea xiii. 14. 



10 CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 

form of the deceased was honoured as a por- 
tion of the Temple of God ; and a funeral be- 
came eminently a religious rite. rt For/' to 
use the words of Bishop Pearson, te as natural 
reason will teach us to give some kind of res- 
pect unto the bodies of men, though dead, in 
reference to the souls which formerly in- 
habited them ; so and much more the fol- 
lowers of our Saviour, while they looked upon 
our bodies as living temples of the Holy 
Ghost, and bought by Christ, to be made one 
day like unto His glorious body, they thought 
them no ways to be neglected after death, 
but carefully to be laid up in the wardrobe of 
the grave, with such respect as might be- 
come the honour of the dead, and the comfort 
of the living." 1 

The Church doeth all things well; and 
as on oilr entrance into the world she hal- 
lowed our mortal bodies by the cleansing 
waters of Baptism, — as with her prayers and 
holy ordinances she hath sanctified and bles- 
sed us in each of the chief events of our lives, 
so she ministers to us in our last and greatest 
extremity ; visiting us in sickness ; tending 

1 Bp. Pearson on the Creed. Art. iv. 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 11 

us when dying, and (so far as in her lies) 
securing for us the prayers of others, when 
we are no longer able to pray for ourselves ; 
and, finally, preparing for us, beside the 
House of God, a quiet resting-place conse- 
crated by a Bishop's benediction, and guaran- 
teed from profaneness and spoliation, and com- 
mitting us thereto with decency and honour, 
with solemn rites and words of chastened 
thanksgiving, till the voice of the Archangel 
and the trump of God shall bid the grave to 
give up its dead, and this mortal to put on 
immortality. 

And the Church doth this because she 
looks upon her children as being in body and 
soul holy unto the Lord. They are not 
their own ; they have been bought with a 
price, redeemed by One Who hath saved 
them from the tyranny of death eternal, and 
will one day restore them from the grave, 
even as of old He led up His chosen people, 
safe and undismayed, through the swellings 
of those waters in which Pharaoh and his 
host were overwhelmed. " Mine own will 
I bring again, as I did sometime from the 
deep of the sea." 



12 CHRISTIAN BURIAL, 

He was crucified, dead, and buried ; and 
we, when we were made Christians, became 
in the language of Scripture partakers of the 
same destiny. In baptism we were crucified, 
for then it was, as S. Paul testifies, that each 
of us became a new man, and " our old man 
was crucified with Christ." In baptism we 
died, for therein, as the same Apostle beareth 
witness, " we be dead with Christ." And 
then, too, we were buried with Him, for, 
" know ye not/' asks S. Paul, " that so many 
of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were 
baptized into His death % Therefore we are 
buried with Him by baptism into death : 
that like as Christ was raised up from the 
dead by the glory of the Father, even so we 
also should walk in newness of life." 

And the result of our having had this in- 
estimable privilege conferred on us has 
been that we are collectively " the body of 
Christ," and also " members in particular ;" 
that we are " members of His body, of His 
flesh, and of His bones," that " our bodies 
are the members of Christ ;" and yet more, 
for since in baptism the Holy Spirit was 
bestowed upon us, we may not doubt but 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 13 

that by His taking up His abode within us, 
our bodies have been in an especial manner 
hallowed and sanctified. " Your body," 
writes the Apostle whom I have already 
quoted, " is the Temple of the Holy Ghost 
Which is in you, Which ye have of God." 
And again, " know ye not that ye are the 
temple of God, and that the Spirit of God 
dwelleth in youl If any man defile the 
temple of God, him shall God destroy ; for 
the temple of God is holy, which temple ye 



are." 



Now it is because the Church has realized 
to herself these things that she has made the 
burial of the Christian dead a religious ser- 
vice. " If any man defile the temple of God, 
him will God destroy :" and therefore she 
will not permit the dead bodies of her chil- 
dren to be left as a prey to the fowls of the 
air, and the flesh of her saints unto the 
beasts of the land : she will not allow them 
to " be cast out in the day to the heat, and 
in the night to the frost." She knows them, 
indeed, to be but dust, frail tabernacles of 
clay, which the worm shall visit, and cor- 
ruption destroy : but it is holy dust, — they 



14 CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 

are hallowed tabernacles. All flesh is not 
the same flesh. And the flesh of him who 
has lived and died a member of Christ, is 
not the same flesh as that of the beasts that 
perish, nor even as that of the unregenerate 
man. " It is," as has been truly said, " the 
material fabric of that temple, within which 
the Holy Spirit of God having dwelt through 
life, Christian graces were produced in the 
soul which lodged there, far more precious in 
the sight of God than jewels of gold, and 
jewels of silver; graces which may well be 
conceived to have communicated a corres- 
ponding value and sanctity to the body, 
within which, as its spiritual attributes, they 
resided." 

Further, since we are members of the 
Church in our bodies as well as in our souls ; 
since we are all members one of another; 
and since, if one member suffers, all the 
other members suffer with it, it follows that 
a slight or dishonour shewn to the corpse of 
any individual Christian would be a slight 
and dishonour both to the whole community, 
and even to Christ Himself, Who has knit 
together His elect in one communion and 
fellowship. 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 15 

Lastly, since to those who, like ourselves, 
profess their belief in the resurrection of the 
dead, and the life of the world to come, the 
separation of friends by death is felt to be 
little more than a temporary interruption of 
intercourse ; since we feel that our friends 
are still living, though a veil be interposed 
between ourselves and them ; since we can- 
not doubt that the ties which once bound us 
bind us still ; since we keep ever before us 
the thought that of the Holy Catholic Church 
the faithful dead no less than the living are 
members, — we could no more bring ourselves 
to treat the dead bodies of our brethren with 
careless rudeness and indifference, than we 
could so treat our living friends. 

And therefore, as I said before, the very 
dust of a Christian is to be looked on as a 
holy thing. 

How thankfully, then, should we acknow- 
ledge the tender love of our Holy Mother in 
providing for her deceased children " peace- 
able habitations, and sure dwellings," and 
in consecrating and setting apart in the 
precincts of the Lord's House, and there- 
fore in the sight of their fellow pilgrims, those 



16 CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 

those " quiet resting-places," where, in their 
narrow beds, those whose travail is ended may 
repose till the morning of the resurrection ! 

How earnestly should we endeavour to 
realize to ourselves that doctrine of the Com- 
munion of Saints which is perhaps nowhere 
more impressively taught than amid those 
receptacles for the dead, where alone in this 
world they who have participated in common 
privileges are brought under a common des- 
tiny, and share a common home ! 

How affectionately, too, should we, who 
are Christians, respect the remains of the 
dead in Christ, strangers as well as friends ! 
With what pious care, so far as in us lies, 
should we guard them from all that may 
savour of irreverent treatment ; entering our 
churchyards as if therein we crossed the 
threshold of the unseen world ; ever speak- 
ing therein (if speak we must) in tones sub- 
dued and lowly as they who would not break 
a wearied friend's repose ; and no more ven- 
turing to tread with careless foot upon the 
grassy mound which covers one for whom 
Christ died, than to commit any other act of 
wanton profaneness ! 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 17 

Lastly, since if even the decaying remains 
of our brethren, known and unknown, are to 
be treated with reverence and affection be- 
cause those bodies which are now the prey of 
corruption were once the temples of the Holy 
Ghost, and by the mighty working of Christ 
our Saviour shall hereafter be made like unto 
His Glorious Body, with what jealous care 
does it behove us to watch and guard our 
own living bodies now ! how carefully should 
we exclude everything that can defile them 
from without, or corrupt them within ! how 
earnestly should we endeavour to make them 
meet for the abiding presence of a Heavenly 
Guest! how sensitively should we shrink 
from anything and everything that may even 
tend to be an offence to Him ! May He, for 
His merciful compassion's sake, enable us, 
while yet we live, to realize more and more 
the awfulness of our baptismal vows. May 
He purify us from all filthiness of flesh and 
spirit ! May He write it indelibly upon our 
hearts that we are already dead, and our life 
is hid with Christ in God, dead to the world 
dead to the flesh, dead to Satan. May He 
pour His grace into our hearts, and enable 

c 2 



18 CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 

us so to live to Christ here, that by His 
Cross and Passion we may be brought to 
the glory of His resurrection, through the 
same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



LECTURE II. 



THE RUBRIC PRELIMINARY TO THE ORDER FOR THE 
BURIAL OF THE DEAD. 



®n tfa ipribtfege of €f;rtstfan burial. 



Romans xiv. 7, 8, 9. 

" For none of us liveth to himself, and no man 
dieth to himself. for whether we live, we live 
unto the lord ; and whether we die, we die unto 
the Lord : whether we live therefore, or die, we 
are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, 

AND ROSE, AND REVIVED, THAT He MIGHT BE LORD 
BOTH OF THE DEAD AND LIVING." 

In that part of the Epistle to the Komans in 
which these words are to be found, S. Paul 
had been blaming some of the Jewish Chris- 
tians for throwing obstacles in the way of the 
Gentile converts at Rome, and disturbing 



20 THE PRIVILEGE OF 

their minds by raising certain unnecessary- 
questions about the use of meats, and by 
the language of contempt and reprobation 
which they had applied to those who did 
not agree in the same opinion with them- 
selves concerning things indifferent. And 
the Apostle's argument in the text is this, 
that as none of us either lives or dies to him- 
self, — that since none of us is his own mas- 
ter, — neither hath any of us the right to live 
as he lists, but all of us are the subjects of 
Christ, and are obliged to do as He hath 
commanded, we must not allow ourselves to 
be guided in religious matters either by our 
own will, or by the will of others, but simply 
and solely by His. 

The rule thus laid down had its primary 
reference to a particular case ; but it must be 
obvious to us that it is of general applica- 
tion, and as such may be taken as a solemn 
protest and warning against a spirit which 
I fear is very prevalent, a spirit of selfishness 
and self-willedness even in religious matters. 
We are here taught that the standard of our 
obedience is to be taken, not from what we 
may happen to like, or what may chance to 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 21 

be the fashion of the time, but from the law 
of Christ and His Church ; and the reason of 
this is because we are God's property, not 
our own ; for Christ both died, and rose 
again, and was received back into life, in 
order that He might make both the living 
and the dead His own peculiar possession. 

Now, if there be one point more clearly- 
set forth than another in the Apostolic writ- 
ings with respect to the constitution of the 
Christian Church, it is what was insisted on 
in the last lecture, and which cannot be too 
often repeated, that we are all members one 
of another ; that we are brethren ; that we 
are parts of one holy communion and fellow- 
ship ; and that as there is but one Body, and 
one Spirit, and one hope of our calling, one 
Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and 
Father of us all, so ought we to be all of one 
heart and one soul, united in one holy bond 
of truth and peace, helping each other along 
the narrow, rugged path, sympathising with 
each other in trouble, and being fellow- 
helpers of each other's joy, — living, in short, 
not for ourselves, but for each other, and for 
Christ, Who died and rose again for us. 



22 THE PRIVILEGE OF 

This is what we ought to be : what we are, 
our habits of life, our ways of going on, and 
our state of feeling towards our brethren, if 
we be honest with ourselves, must tell us. 
How much in the habits of our daily life is 
artificial, unnatural, exclusive ! To multi- 
tudes who are called by the name of Christ 
self is everything, and Christian fellowship is 
nothing. It is gone, vanished, past away ; 
no more to be found among the many, than 
Christian reverence, or the ancient severity of 
Christian life. In many instances our very 
religion rarely goes beyond ourselves ; within 
us it may have a little warmth; beyond us it 
freezes. It is scarcely an exaggeration to 
say of any one who has adopted the religion 
of the day, that "he is his own centre and 
circumference too ; that is, to draw all things 
to himself, and extend nothing beyond him- 
self, he not only loves not his neighbour as 
himself, but accounts nothing for his neigh- 
bour but himself." 1 

I do not, of course, mean to deny that 
there is much kindness, charity, and genero- 
sity in the world, but that we have lost 

1 South's Serm. i. 346. 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 23 

those true Catholic feelings of mutual in- 
terest for and in each other, and for all that 
everywhere are called by the name of Christ, 
which were eminently characteristic of the 
first ages of the Church ; and our deficiency 
in this respect cannot but be a proof that 
there is something radically wrong in our 
whole system. We fail to realize to our- 
selves that, whether in life or death, we are 
members one of another. 

A circumstance of trivial importance in 
itself will often serve to exemplify a fact as 
satisfactorily as one of greater consequence. 
And the train of thought which led to these 
observations, arose from consideration of a 
pious custom universally observed of old, 
and though not laid aside, turned into a use- 
less, unmeaning form by ourselves, and 
which had an intimate connection with the 
subjects on which we are engaged at present, — 
the Church's treatment of her departed chil- 
dren. 

Who, then, let me ask you, when he hears 
the passing bell, ever thinks of praying for 
the passing soul % Or rather (to put the 
question in another form), who ever hears 



24 THE PRIVILEGE OF 

that bell at all before the soul has passed 
away ] 

And yet what is the Church's law upon 
the subject ] "When any," saith the Canon, 1 
"is passing out of this life, a bell shall be 
tolled, and the minister shall not then slack 
to do his duty. And after the party's death, 
(if it so fall out) there shall be rung no more 
than one short peal, and one other before the 
burial, and one other after the burial." 

According to modern usage, we either 
omit the custom wholly, or defer the tolling 
of the bell till after death, and then, as it 
should seem, excuse ourselves from any 
devotional exercise upon the plea that prayer 
for our fellow Christian has then become 
useless. We esteem it a cruel thing, we re- 
pudiate the notion as something too shocking 
to be thought of, that a man should hear 
his own death-knell, 2 and thus we contrive to 

1 Canon 67. 
2 Nelson in his Fasts and Festivals speaking of the dying 
Christian who has subdued his passions, says, " If his senses 
hold out so long, he can hear even his passing bell without dis- 
turbance." This would seem to shew that the ancient custom 
was not wholly laid aside in his day ; but there is a remarkable 
passage in Fuller's " Good Thoughts in Worse Times/' which 
proves that in 1647 the practice was by some rather honoured 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 25 

save ourselves a warning, and to deprive our 
brother of the benefit of our prayers. O 
miserable and irrefragable proof of the decline 
and decay of religion among us, — of the lives 
which most of us must be leading, and of 
the feelings with which we look on death ! 

Who that had endeavoured to live by his 
baptismal vows, who that had habituated 
himself to bear his daily cross, and to die 
daily, would hear with shuddering and dis- 
may his own passing bell ] V/ho but would 

in the breach, than in the observance. "Deceived not Hurt. — 
Hearing a passing bell, I prayed that the sick man might have, 
through Christ, a safe voyage to his long home. Afterwards I 
understood that the party was dead some hours before; and it 
seems in some places of London the tolling of the bell is but a 
preface of course to the ringing it out. Bells better silent than 
thus telling lies. What is this but giving a false alarm to men's 
devotions, to make them to be ready armed with their prayers 
for the assistance of such who have already fought the good 
fight, yea, and gotten the conquest ? Not to say that men's 
charity herein may be suspected of superstition in praying for 
the dead. However, my heart thus poured out was not spilt on 
the ground, my prayers, too late to do him good, came soon 
enough to speak my good will. What I freely tendered, God 
fairly took, according to the integrity of my intention. The 
party I hope is in Abraham's, and my prayers I am sure are 
returned into my own bosom.'' See also Brand's Popular An- 
tiquities, by Ellis, Vol. I J. 128, where it is clearly established 
that in former times the passing bell was tolled before death, 
and while the dying person was in extremis. 

D 



26 THE PRIVILEGE OF 

rather recognize tones of joy than of sorrow 
in its solemn sound 1 Each toll would speak 
to him of a diminished space between earth 
and paradise ; in every note he would have 
an encouragement to maintain his faith and 
stedfastness, for that every moment was 
bringing him nearer to that state in which 
his warfare should be accomplished, and his 
trials ended ; in which the world should se- 
duce, and Satan tempt, and the flesh betray 
no more ; and in which sorrow should be 
turned into joy, and weariness into calm re- 
pose, and pain into perfect ease. Surely 
unto those to whom it is Christ to live, and 
gain to die, the passing bell would sound 
like the welcoming of angels from the distant 
choirs of heaven, — would seem like the calls 
and beckonings of blessed spirits from the 
world within the veil. 

And so, if instead of being as we most of 
us are, isolated, exclusive, eager only to save 
ourselves pain and discomfort, and shrinking 
from all that may remind us that this life is 
not all ; that it is appointed unto men once 
to die, but after death the judgment ; if we 
practically acknowledged the claims of Chris- 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 27 

tian brotherhood, and felt ourselves to be in- 
deed members one of another, bound together 
in the bonds of Christ, how different would 
be our feelings from what they are now with 
respect to our dying neighbours ! We hear 
the bell toll, and we pause for a moment in 
our work or conversation to ask who is dead, 
and when we are told, a few words of pity, or 
cold-hearted censoriousness, or speculation 
about his worldly goods are spoken, and so 
the subject is dismissed. Of old it was not 
so. Of old it was contrived that all who 
lived within the sound of that bell should 
know, by the manner in which it was tolled, 
whether the departing soul was that of male 
or female, adult or child, layman or priest ; 
and then, whether in the house or the field, 
at home or abroad, in solitude or company, 
all knees were bended, and the prayers were 
said in behalf of the brother or the sister 
whose spirit was passing away, that God 
would be with him in his last agony, would 
deliver him from evil, and save him from the 
gates of hell, would grant him rest eternal 
and everlasting light, would translate him 
safe and undismayed from the trials of the 



28 THE PRIVILEGE OF 

Church militant on earth, to the joys of the 
Church triumphant in heaven. » 

Well ; these things have passed away, 
even as others of far deeper importance. And 
still as Faith grows feehler, and love waxes 
colder, we shall think less and less of the 
unseen world, and sympathize less and less 
with one another, and honour Him less and 
less Who hung upon the cross for us, till 
Antichrist shall come, and then what hope is 
there that we shall not be sharers in his 
apostacy % 

Still, while the fast-fading memory of these 
things is preserved, they are the Church's 
witness against a perverse and self-willed 
generation ; they are an evidence that she 

1 Durand in his Rationale, lib. 1. §. 4, has the following re- 
marks on the subject. " Verum aliquo moriente, Campansc 
debent pulsari, ut populus hoc audiens, oret pro illo. Pro 
muliere quidem bis, pro eo quod ipsa invenit asperitatem. 
Primo enim fecit hominem alienum a Deo, quare secunda Dies 
non habuit benedictionem. — Pro viro vero ter pulsatur, quia 
primo inventa est in Homine Trinitas : primo enim formatus 
est Adam de Terra, deinde Mulier ex Adam, postea Homo 
creatus est ab utroque, et ita est ibi Trinitas. Si autem clericus 
sit tot vicibus simpulsatur,* quot ordines habuit ipse. Ad ulti- 
mum vero compulsari debet cum omnibus campanis, ut ita 
sciat populus pro quo sit orandum." 
* " Simpulsare : simpliciter pulsare, seu unicam campanam." Dn Cange. 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 29 

points out the way, though we may refuse to 
walk in it. 

And now suppose, as an illustration of the 
subject we are considering, that the bell, 
whose solemn sound has for a moment 
startled us and warned us of the uncertainty 
of this life, is the token that the soul of 
some neighbour of our own has actually de- 
parted, we are reminded that even in death 
the Church will not lose sight of her chil- 
dren. Once her children, we shall, except 
by our own fault, continue her children for 
ever; and the echoes of that bell, which 
sounded as the spirit winged its flight into 
the unseen world, will be awakened again 
when the body is committed to the Church's 
keeping till its reproduction at the last day. 

Suppose, then, the decent preparations of 
surviving affection to have been duly made, 
suppose the corpse shrouded, and coffined, 
and made ready for the grave, whither, let 
me ask, is it to be borne % And if, in doing 
so, I seem to make a needless inquiry, I only 
do it to remind you of one of those many 
privileges which are so common to us, that 

v2 



SO THE PRIVILEGE OF 

we forget to be thankful for them. It is to 
the Church we owe it that there is a place 
set apart and consecrated by lawful authority 
for the interment of the Christian dead, and 
hallowed to that purpose, even in the eyes of 
the most reckless, by the associations of ages ; 
and that place, it is needless to say, is the 
space surrounding the sacred edifice in which, 
while we live, we offer up our prayers, and 
to which we are borne in the course of our 
passage to the grave. To us the idea of 
church and churchyard is that of an insepa- 
rable connection, but it is well for us to be 
reminded that we owe that connection to 
those blessed Saints who, in the early ages 
of heathen persecution, laid down their lives 
gladly for the gospel's sake. The spot in 
which a martyr was buried could not but be, 
in the opinion of those who had witnessed 
his faith and patience and constancy, holy 
ground ; and therefore it frequently hap- 
pened, that a chapel or oratory was erected 
over his remains ; and as it was the natural 
wish of many who revered his memory to lay 
their bones beside his bones, or at least as 
near to them as possible, in process of time 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 



31 



each church had its cemetery, — that is, its 
sleeping-place — surrounding it, which was so 
designated, because they who gave the name 
judged rightly that death was but a kind of 
sleep, and that the bodies there deposited 
were not dead in the heathen sense of the 
term, but only laid to sleep till the resurrec- 
tion should awaken them. 1 

Such was the origin of our churchyards ; 
and as, in ancient times, no church was con- 
secrated unless it contained within it the 
relics of some saint or martyr, 2 the primitive 
desire of being laid at last near a place where 
the holy mysteries were celebrated, and 
where the remains of some eminent servant 
of God were reposing, was kept up and fos- 
tered to a comparatively late period. 

It is to this feeling that the edifice in 
which we are now assembled owes a feature 
of peculiar interest, and one which affords to 
every thoughtful mind an affecting illustra- 
tion of the Church's doctrine, that the faith- 
ful living and the faithful dead are one fel- 

1 See Durant de Kit. Eccl. Cath.. 1. i. cap. xxiii. And Bing- 
ham, Book xxiii. ch. i. 

2 Bingham, Book xxiii, ch. i. § 5. 



32 THE PRIVILEGE OF 

lowship in Christ, and that death makes no 
separation in the communion of saints, no 
breach of the spiritual conjunction of the 
members with each other and with the Head. 
Look at yonder tombs which are clustered 
beside the altar, — so fair in their proportions, 
so elaborate in their ornaments, so exqui- 
sitely finished in their minutest details. Is 
it possible to gaze upon the effigies recum- 
bent thereon, and not carry our thoughts be- 
yond the pale cold alabaster to the unseen 
world around us, and to the feeling which 
those who reared such memorials must have 
desired to convey to the minds of after ages 1 
They would tell us that the departed are still 
one with us in spirit, and in hopes. Mark 
the calm, contemplative faces of all the 
figures, — not corpse-like, and yet not living, — 
not inanimate, and yet without a vestige of 
earthly passion ; mark the aspect of deep 
devotion, mark the hands upturned and 
clasped in prayer, and say whether we are 
not thereby forcibly reminded that the visible 
congregation of worshippers have a host of 
invisible companions engaged in a like occu- 
pation! Mark again how near to the Altar 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 



these monuments have been reared ; the main 
wall has been cut away to give to one the 
closest propinquity to the Holy Table, and a 
second presses close upon the first, and the 
rest are as near as the space around will per- 
mit. Of course, I do not speak of these 
things as thinking them of any importance in 
themselves, but may I not say, that those 
who willed that their remains should be so 
deposited, had at least a reverential feeling 
for holy places, and had comfort in the 
thought, that even in death their bodies 
should not be separated from the spot which 
they honoured most when living % 

With ourselves at the present day, perhaps, 
the feeling with reference to our place of 
sepulture is that of good old Jacob, that we 
desire to be buried with our fathers; we 
wish not to be divided in death from those 
whom we have loved in life ; the language 
of Ruth to Naomi is the universal language 
of deep affection, if Intreat me not to leave 
thee, or to return from following after thee : 
for whither thou goest, I will go ; and where 
thou lodgest, I will lodge : thy people shall 
be my people, and thy God my God : where 



34 THE PRIVILEGE OF 

thou diest, will I die, and there will I he 
buried : the Lord do so to me, and more also, 
if ought but death part thee and me." And 
this is not only a blameless, but a praise- 
worthy motive, so that it be kept subordinate 
to another, — namely, that in death, as well as 
life, we desire to repose under the shadow of 
the Church's wing, and to share in common 
with all our brethren the privileges which, 
whether in life or death, she confers on us. 

To their grave, then, in the Church's con- 
secrated ground, all in their turn are borne 
who are capable of Christian burial. And 
all who have been made Christians, and 
have not forfeited that title, have such a 
privilege conceded them. But there is, as has 
been already said, a restriction. The office 
of the Burial of the Dead " is not to be used 
for any that die unbaptized, or excommuni- 
cate, or have laid violent hands upon them- 
selves." 

By an error on the side of charity, and 
therefore perhaps excusable, we do not re- 
fuse even to these a place in the churchyard 
(though custom usually keeps that place dis- 
tinct from the rest), for they were created in 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 35 

the image of God, and therefore it is not meet 
that their bodies should be treated with un- 
feeling and indecent contumely. But over the 
remains of such persons the Church permits 
no word of comfort to be spoken, and she 
cannot bless God for having delivered them 
out of the miseries of this sinful world, for 
she has no sure ground and warrant of Holy 
Scripture whereon to build the hope that 
they are resting in Him. 

The infant which has died unbaptized she 
leaves, with humble trust in the tender pity 
of our God, to His uncovenanted mercies ; 
but, since she knows that every one born into 
this world is a child of wrath, and deserveth 
God's wrath and damnation, she does not 
venture to speak of it as she would of one 
who, by the washing of regeneration and re- 
newing of the Holy Ghost, had been made a 
member of Christ, a child of God, and an 
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. 

The person who has died excommunicate 
she declines to admit to the same privileges 
as her faithful children, since to do so would 
be to prophesy smooth things, and to speak 
peace where there is no peace ; because, so 
far as God has made known His intentions 



36 THE PRIVILEGE OF 

to us, there is no hope of salvation without 
the pale of the Church ; l and therefore, when 
the Church excommunicates, she does it in 
mercy, and for the health of the soul, in 
order that, as one of our ritualists expresses 
it, " she may thereby bring the excommuni- 
cate to seek the absolution and peace of the 
Church before he leaves the world ;" and if 
not, to declare him cut off from the body of 
Christ, so that others, admonished by his 
example, may be the more' afraid to offend. 

Lastly, she withholds the right of Chris- 
tian burial from such as have knowingly, de- 
liberately, and in full possession of their 
senses, laid violent hands upon themselves, 
because suicide is, to all intents and pur- 
poses, a most sinful and presumptuous mur- 
der, and we have the direct testimony of 
God's own word to the fact, that "no murderer 
hath eternal life abiding in him," and that 
" murderers. . . .shall have their part in the 
lake which burneth with fire and brimstone ; 
which is the second death." 



1 " Quisquis ille est, et qtialiscunque est, Christianus non 
est, qui in Christi Ecclesia non est." — Cyprian in Epist. ad 
Antonian. See Marshall on the Penitential Discipline of the 
Church, p. 56, note (Oxford, 1844). 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 37 

Such are the ordinances of the Church, con- 
ceived in a spirit, not of narrow bigotry and 
party zeal, but of holy wisdom, and true 
charity : and if, in just judgment on the sins 
cf her sons and their unhappy divisions, Pro- 
vidence has permitted that she should be so far 
overborne by the unjust aggressions of tem- 
poral power, and hampered by the political in- 
terference of men who little understand her 
spirit, as to be unable to prevent some of these 
provisions from being in some respects refined 
away, and made a snare for the consciences of 
those who desire to carry out the Church's in- 
tentions honestly, and yet not to break the 
laws of the land, allowance must be made for a 
mother depressed and broken by the unnatu- 
ral acts of her own children, and we must 
pray God, in His own good time, to raise 
her from the dust, and make her in practice 
what she is in theory. 

For ourselves, be it our care that as by 
the great mercy of God we have been ad- 
mitted to her fullest privileges, so we shew 
ourselves worthy of them ; that having been 
received into her fold by Baptism, by no 
subsequent act we practically exclude our- 

E 



38 THE PRIVILEGE OF 

selves from it ; that we watch earnestly 
against giving way to that turbulent, proud, 
self-willed spirit, which leads to those sins 
of which excommunication is the meet and 
fitting punishment ; that we shew ourselves 
in all things docile, obedient, loyal children, 
submitting ourselves unreservedly to her 
authority, and aiming to acquire that mind 
which was in Christ Jesus ; that we take 
care that no word or deed of our's prove a 
stumbling-block in the way of even the least 
or weakest of His little ones ; that nothing 
we say or do have a tendency to create or to 
continue schism ; that we keep ever in mind 
that none of us liveth to himself, and no man 
dieth to himself: for whether we live we 
live unto the Lord, and whether we die we 
die unto the Lord ; that whether we live or 
die we are the Lord's ; that to this end 
Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that 
He might be the Lord both of the dead and 
living ; and that, therefore, we must surren- 
der ourselves body and soul, heart and mind, 
affections and inclinations, so as to have no 
wish or desire beyond that of doing the will 
of Him Who is the Aid of all that need, the 



CHRISTIAN BURIAL. 39 

Helper of all that flee to Him for succour, 
the Life of them that believe, and the Ee- 
surrection of the dead. 



LECTURE III. 



ON THE SENTENCES TO BE SAID OR SUNG BY THE PRIEST 
AND CLERKS, WHO MEET AND PRECEDE THE CORPSE. 



JFatti), patience, ®f)ankfulncss, t^e ©races of ISmaocment. 

Job i. 21. 

" The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken 
away; blessed be the name of the lord." 

" The end of funeral duties," saith Hooker, 
" is, first, to shew that love towards the party- 
deceased which nature requireth ; then to do 
him that honour which is fit both generally 
for man, and particularly for the quality of 
his person; last of all, to testify the care 
which the Church hath to comfort the living, 

e 2 



42 



THE GRACES OF 



and the hope which we all have concerning 
the resurrection of the dead." 

Now, if this be a true statement (and I 
think it must approve itself to the reason of 
every man as such), it cannot be disputed 
that our own Service for the Burial of the 
Dead is admirably adapted to its purpose ; 
seeing that, while it treats the dead in Christ 
with that reverent care which is meet for 
the members of the Lord's Body, and gives 
full scope for the display of affectionate re- 
gret on the part of surviving friends, it also 
provides abundant sources of godly hope and 
consolation to the mourners in their bereave- 
ment, and at the same time does not fail to 
avail itself of such a solemn opportunity 
of reminding them of their own duties and 
responsibilities, as being themselves appointed 
soon to die, and hereafter to stand before the 
judgment-seat of Christ. 

With this view it adapts itself to every 
feeling which may be expected to arise suc- 
cessively in the heart of a sorrowing kins- 
man as he accompanies the corpse of his de- 
parted relative to the grave ; and it speaks, — 
by the way, — in the church, — and at the 



BEREAVEMENT. 43 

grave-side, in terms which seem the most 
appropriate to each situation. Thus, as soon 
as the funeral train enters upon the conse- 
crated ground of the churchyard, it is met 
with words of all others the best calculated 
to stir up the minds of mourners to faith, pa- 
tience, and thankfulness. In the church, 
the doctrine of man's mortality, and the cer- 
tainty of the resurrection, is declared in the 
fullest and clearest manner in which Scrip- 
ture has revealed it. While at the grave, by 
exhortation, by prayer, and by blessing, the 
bereaved are comforted, and forbidden to 
sorrow as men that have no hope. 

Of these three divisions of the Burial Ser- 
vice it is now my intention to speak at length. 
And first of the Introductory Sentences, as 
they are called, which will afford abundant 
matter for our contemplation on the present 
occasion. 

The law of the Church directs that the 
priest and clerks shall meet the corpse at the 
entrance of the churchyard, and going before 
it, shall say or sing those sentences of Scrip- 
ture to which I am about to direct your 



44 THE GRACES OF 

thoughts. — Thus, at the very outset, the 
Church provides (at least in the ordinary 
course of circumstances, and where the paro- 
chial system is fairly carried out according to 
her intentions) that those who, in their afflic- 
tion and bereavement, are come to pay their 
last sad tribute of respect and love, should be 
supported in the sharpest portion of their 
trial by the presence of one who, in his 
ministerial capacity, was in his degree re- 
sponsible for the spiritual condition of their 
deceased relation, as being his appointed 
minister and pastor. The same individual 
who, it may be, through the long course of 
decline aud suffering, had stood day by day 
beside the sick man's bed, and heard his pro- 
fession of the Catholick Faith, and received 
the confession of his sins, and listened to his 
deep ejaculations of remorse and humilia- 
tion, and seen his tears, and witnessed his 
faith and patience, is now at hand to commit 
him to his peaceful resting-place in humble 
hope of his resurrection to a blessed immor- 
tality : the same voice which uttered grave 
counsels, and kind advice, and mingled in- 
struction with prayers and the comfort of the 



BEREAVEMENT. 45 

Church's absolving words, is now heard once 
more ; and it is no stranger, but a familiar 
friend, — one who is known to sorrow and 
sympathize with the bereavement, — that 
speaks the Church's consolatory salutation 
to the bereaved: and the hands which, though 
soon to be stretched forth to consign " earth 
to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," are 
recognized as the same which conveyed to 
the dying man those life-giving elements, to 
which, when worthily received, the promise 
is attached, that they who so receive them 
shall " live for ever," and shall " be raised up 
at the last day" to " life eternal." 

Thus the Church, like Him, her merciful 
Lord, Who wept at the grave of Lazarus, 
compassionates our weakness, and is touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities, and tends 
us with a parent's affection. And as He 
Who died and rose again, vouchsafed after 
His resurrection to join Himself to the dis- 
ciples on the road to Emmaus as they walked 
and were sad, — as He talked with them by 
the way and opened to them the Scriptures, 
so, as we walk and are sad, doth she send one 
who shall stand in Christ's place to us, and 



46 THE GRACES OF 

who, in the hour of final parting, when our 
dead is about to be buried out of our sight, 
and when, in the bitterness of separation, we 
are barely restraining ourselves from lifting 
up our voices and saying, " Ah my brother, 
or, Ah sister!" or, in the intensity of pa- 
rental anguish, from exclaiming, " Would 
God I had died for thee, my son, my son !" 
shall meet us by the way, and cause our 
sinking hearts once more to burn within us, 
by teaching us out of God's Own Word the 
holiest lessons of faith, patience, and thank- 
fulness. 

"1 am the Resurrection and the Life, 
saith the Lord : he that belie veth in Me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live : and 
whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall 
never die." 

Such are the well-known words with 
which the Church greets the funeral train. 
And who that hears them can forget their 
appropriateness to the occasion] Who but 
will recall the circumstances under which 
they were first spoken, and Who it was that 
spake them'? Who but will have vividly 
brought before his mind's eye the scene at 



BEREAVEMENT. 47 

Bethany — the bereaved sisters, and their 
mourning friends — Martha meeting the Re- 
deemer with those touching words of half- 
reproachful anguish for what had, no doubt, 
seemed to her an unnecessary delay, "Lord, 
if Thou hadst been here my brother had not 
died," — and Mary, when she saw Him, fall- 
ing at His feet and giving vent to the same 
feelings in the same expressions ; the cave, 
with the stone lying upon it ; dead Lazarus, 
bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, not 
yet awakened from his four days' sleep ; the 
merciful and compassionate Saviour, He 
Whose own hour was at hand, undismayed 
by the approach of His personal sufferings, 
yet groaning in the spirit and troubled, nay, 
actually weeping for the woes of others, and 
for all the misery which sin had brought into 
the world ; and, above all, the trial and con- 
firmation of Martha's faith % Hear her, even 
while she repines at the unlooked-for absence 
of the Lord when most she had hoped for 
His presence, still never doubting that He 
was One on Whom that Spirit had de- 
scended which had enabled Elijah to breathe 
life into the dead son of the widow of Za- 



48 THE GRACES OF 

repta, and Elisha to bring back from the 
unseen world to the tabernacle it had quitted 
the soul of the Shunamite woman's child. 
" Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother 
had not died. But I know that even now, 
whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will 
give it Thee." Hear next the gracious Sa- 
viour, leading her on, step by step, till she 
should exhibit such a faith as would allow 
Him to make the most comfortable declara- 
tion the world had ever heard since the gates 
of Paradise had closed on fallen Adam, and 
to confirm it by a miracle the most stupen- 
dous which the world had yet seen, and only 
to be surpassed by that in which He Him- 
self, by His self-inherent power, took up 
again that life which He had voluntarily re- 
signed, and burst the bonds of death, and 
rose triumphant from the grave, " because it 
was not possible that He should be holden 
of it." — u Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother 
shall rise again. Martha saith unto Him, I 
know that he shall rise again at the last day. 
Jesus said unto her, I am the Resurrection 
and the Life : he that believeth in Me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and 



BEREAVEMENT. 49 

whosoever liveth and belie veth in Me shall 
never die." 

O blessed, cheering words, which, if only 
we could enter fully into their deep meaning, — 
if only, through manifold infirmities and sins, 
our hearts had not waxed so gross that things 
temporal are always more to us than things 
eternal, would be to us, throughout our whole 
mortal course, in youth or age, in joy or sorrow, 
in health or sickness, our ever-present hope 
and consolation ! They are the promise and 
pledge of our restored nature in Christ Jesus, 
and that as none, through Adam's transgres- 
sion, could see God's face and live, so none 
could hear the voice of the Son of God and 
continue among the dead. " I am the Re- 
surrection and the Life," said He, " he that 
believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live." And then to prove the great- 
ness of His power to fulfil His promise, He 
called Lazarus from his grave. " And he 
that was dead came forth." And that resur- 
rection was the confirmation of the remainder 
of the promise, "he that liveth and be- 
lieveth in Me shall never die." No, not 
though the soul departs, and the flesh de- 

F 



50 THE GRACES OF 

cays, and the worm devours, shall he that 
believeth in Christ die: to him, what we 
call death is but birth unto life; to him, 
disease, and pain, and dissolution, are but 
the rough incidents of a journey which hasten 
his progress home ; to him, the separation of 
soul and body is but the setting the prisoner 
free, — the deliverance of the captive, — the 
restoration of sight to the blind, — the un- 
binding of the wings of the dove which longs 
to flee away, and be at rest. 

No wonder that, by all Christians, in all 
ages and places, these words have been used 
as part of the burial service. No wonder 
that they who lived more to God than we do, 
mingled Alleluias with their tears, as they 
bore their dead to the grave ; for here we 
learn that He Who hath already raised us 
from a state of death by nature to a state of 
life by grace, will, if through that grace we 
continue his faithful soldiers and servants to 
our lives' end, so bless us and visit us with 
His salvation, that death shall be deprived of 
its sting, and victory be wrested from the in- 
evitable grave. 

But the Church does not content herself 



BEREAVEMENT. 51 

with teaching the necessity of Faith ; she 
next proceeds to remind her children of a 
most wonderful example of it, in that con- 
fession of holy Job, which, spoken, as in all 
probability it was, near two thousand years 
before the coming of Christ, contains in its 
short compass ail that we, who live in the 
full light of the Gospel, could desire to ex- 
press. " I know that my Redeemer liveth, 
and that He shall stand at the latter day 
upon the earth : and though after my skin 
worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh 
shall I see God : Whom I shall see for my- 
self, and mine eyes shall behold, and not 
another." 

Long use has familiarized us to that which, 
take it all in all, is perhaps the most won- 
drous passage in the Old Testament, other- 
wise it could not fail, one would suppose, to 
rouse, to reassure, and to console the most 
broken-hearted of mourners. For consider 
what it really is which was here revealed. 
The patriarch, wearied out with the re- 
proaches of his friends, appeals from their 
judgment, and anticipates a future day, in 
which, having survived the grave, he should 



52 THE GRACES OF 

be clothed with immortality in the presence 
of his Redeemer and his God. Two thou- 
sand years before the redemption of mankind, 
he declares not only his belief in, but his 
knowledge of the existence of a Redeemer ; 
he expresses his assurance of a part which 
that Redeemer should sustain, — " He shall 
stand at the latter day 1 upon the earth ;" he 
calls that Redeemer his own, — " I know that 
my Redeemer liveth ;" he states his convic- 
tion that though " after his skin," (that is, 
upon its decay, 2 ) " worms should destroy his 
body," nevertheless he shall see his Re- 
deemer face to face, and that in the self-same 
body in which he was then suffering, and 
which long before that time would have be- 
come the prey of worms in the grave, he 
would rise again. He knew that as soon as 
he should become the tenant of the grave, 
damp and mildew, fermentation and putre- 
faction, would speedily commence their loath- 
some work, and, in the end, complete it so 

1 Or " at last," for, observes Bishop Patrick, the word " day" 
is not in the Hebrew. 

2 " After my skin," &c., Bishop Patrick's paraphrase of these 
words is, "Though the worms which have eaten my skin 
should proceed to consume the rest of my body, yet," &c. 



BEREAVEMENT. 53 

effectually, that not one particle of that which 
was once a living man should be distinguish- 
able from the soil around. Yet, knowing 
this, he nevertheless believed that this ruin, 
this dissolution, this utter disappearance of 
the fleshly compound should one day be re- 
suscitated, that the mouldering dust should 
be again instinct with form and motion, that 
the dry bones should be filled with marrow, 
and the whole man restored to life and 
vigour ; and more than this, that the won- 
drous work should be accomplished in such 
a manner as that personal identity should 
never be lost ; that to the same body from 
which the soul by death was separated, by 
resurrection it should be re-united ; that it 
shall know that in that body it died, and in 
that it has risen again; and that the body 
shall have his own assurance that he sees 
God for himself; yea, that they are his own 
eyes that behold Him, " and not another's." 

Such was the faith of Job ; and his words, 
as used in the Burial Service, seem, as it 
were, to be a voice from the bier itself, and 
as if the dead were permitted to address those 
who wept and bewailed him, and to console 

f2 



54 THE GRACES OF 

them by giving a last evidence of hope and 
peaceful trust in God. 

And now the Church leads the mourner a 
step forward, by encouraging him to add to 
his faith, Patience. Another passage is re- 
cited from Holy Scripture, and it is this: 
" We brought nothing into fhis world, and it 
is certain that we can carry nothing out." 
Here is a thought which, if in this life only 
we had hope, would make us miserable. But, 
being what we are, it becomes a consolation, 
even while it is an admonition. While it 
teaches us that it is mere folly and madness 
to heap up for ourselves and set store by 
things which will be speedily taken from us, 
if we are not first taken from them, it also 
gives us good reason why we should possess 
our souls in patience, and let her have 
therein her perfect work. To suffer without 
patience is of all suffering the most intense. 
It is fretfulness that most aggravates fever ; 
it is resistance to the physician which will 
at once increase the severity of the malady, 
and foil his efforts to remove it. Patience is 
the most needful of all graces for those whom 



BEREAVEMENT. 55 

God visits with chastening. But suffer- 
ing does not necessarily bring patience. S. 
Paul, indeed, says that tribulation worketh pa- 
tience, and S. James testifies that the trying of 
our faith worketh patience ; but it is only in 
the case of those who have learned after the 
example of their Redeemer, to say, " Not my 
will, but Thine be done !" And, therefore, 
is it exceedingly needful that we should be 
taught to seek after patience when suffering 
bereavement, because, although as respects 
our deceased friends, if they have lived in 
God's faith and fear, we cannot doubt that 
their exchange of the miseries of this sinful 
world, for the calm repose of paradise, must 
be a blessed one; still, as soon as we begin to 
dwell upon our own loss, there is the temp- 
tation to murmur and repine, and to feel that 
we would rebel if we dared, that we would 
resist if we could. It is to quell and disci- 
pline such a temper that the Church brings 
the passage of Scripture which we are con- 
sidering before our thoughts. For what if 
God were to strip us of every blessing in- 
stead of continuing to us so many as He 
does; what right have we to murmur'? 



56 THE GRACES OF 

" We brought no friends with us into this 
world," as it has been well observed, " nor 
can we carry them out from hence; they 
were given us by God, Who can raise up 
others, and they are taken away by Him, 
one by one, the better to prepare us for our 
own approaching death, when we must part 
with all at once." As he whom we are ac- 
companying to the grave has been forced to 
leave houses and lands, and all his worldly 
possessions behind him, so must we learn to 
do without him, — to do without everything 
which God may withdraw from us. As S. 
Chrysostom says, " We want no superfluities, 
if we brought nothing with us, and shall 
take nothing away with us." 1 The soul of 
man has need of nothing but of God : all else 
is superfluous, to be received with thankful- 
ness, indeed, while bestowed, but not to be 
murmured after when removed ; and there- 
fore it is, that to the declaration that " we 
brought nothing into this world, and it is 
certain we can carry nothing out," the 
Church, on the occasion to which we are 
alluding, adds, as part of the same sentence, 

1 Horn. xvii. in Tim. 



BEREAVEMENT. 57 

the words of one who, when he spake them, 
had seen in a single day his ten children 
slain, and himself made a beggar: "The 
Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, 
blessed be the name of the Lord." 

It is not enough for the true servant of God 
to be patient, he must advance yet a step fur- 
ther ; he must be thankful. Shall I receive 
good from the hands of the Lord, and shall 
I not receive evil ? will be his constant feel- 
ing, or rather his faith will have taught him 
that through that which the world calls evil, 
God is ever working out good for them that 
love Him. He will recognize in all that 
comes upon him, the loving hand of a hea- 
venly Father, and when called upon to suffer, 
he will rejoice if by any means he is a par- 
taker of Christ's sufferings, in the hope that 
when His glory shall be revealed, it may be 
granted him to be glad with exceeding joy. 
He will track his Saviour along that dolo- 
rous way which once he trod from Gethse- 
mane to Calvary, he will ever keep before 
him that series of unutterable sufferings ; 
he will ask himself continually, Was ever 
sorrow like unto that sorrow'? and thus 



r 
58 THE GRACES OF BEREAVEMENT. 



the contemplation of his own light afflictions, 
which are but for a moment, will produce in 
him an ever-growing sense of thankfulness. 
Trouble, pain, unkindness, worldly loss, se- 
paration, bereavement, what are they all but 
shadows of the cross % 

Happy they on whose shoulders it is laid, 
if only they will receive it as a precious bur- 
den ! May God for His dear Son's sake, help 
us not to wish its load away, yea, may He 
strengthen us to bear it, to love it, and find that 
which is to be found in even its sharpest 
pang and bitterest agony, — comfort, peace, 
and life eternal ! 



LECTURE IV. 

ON THE PROPER PSALMS. 

%%t BailB Spectacle of Jftortalttp. 

Psalm xxxix. 6. 
"Verily every man living is altogether vanity." 

The Church, in her Order for the Burial of 
the Dead, assumes that those who have lived 
and died in her communion, have walked 
worthy of the vocation wherewith they were 
called; and as S. Paul, when he wrote to 
the Christians at Rome, or Corinth, or else- 
where, did not scruple to address them as 
rc Saints," as the " elect," as " sanctified in 
Christ Jesus," and "beloved in God," be- 
cause he knew that they had been admitted 
into the true fold, and it was no part of his 
intention to express an opinion how far any 



60 THE DAILY SPECTACLE 

individual here and there had erred and 
strayed from it; so our Holy Mother hesi- 
tates not to apply the language of comfort- 
able hope to all her children who are brought 
to her for burial, though she judiciously uses 
terms which are capable of being applied 
with very different degrees of hope, — from 
the greatest confidence to the faintest shadow 
of a feeling short of despair; she judges no- 
thing before the time, but trusts that they 
whom she has known to have begun well 
maintained their stedfastness unto the end; 
she forbears all allusion to the comparative 
state of individuals, and leaves everything 
beyond the mere fact of external communion 
with herself, to the decision of that day when 
the Lord shall come, " Who both will bring 
to light the hidden things of darkness, and 
will make manifest the counsels of the hearts." 
Hence it is, as we have seen, that she ever 
meets the dead with reverent and kindly 
welcome, permitting the introductory sen- 
tences of the burial service to be sung, if so it 
should seem good, in order that by thanks- 
giving and the voice of melody, it may be 
testified that she sorrows not as they who 



OF MORTALITY. 61 

have no hope, and that she looks on the 
grave and gate of death as the portal to a 
blessed resurrection. 

Thus she honours the dead, and encourages 
the mourner. But she has other duties to 
discharge, and will not miss an opportunity 
of discharging them. As respects the dead, 
his time of earthly trial is ended, he can be 
no more awakened to repentance, nor ex- 
cited to greater watchfulness. " The grave 
cannot praise Thee, O Lord, death cannot 
celebrate Thee: they that go down into the 
pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, 
the living he shall praise Thee." This senti- 
ment of Hezekiah the Church adopts as her 
own, and while she pays due reverence to 
the dead, she does it in the manner in which 
she considers she can most benefit the 
living, — those whose day of grace is not over, 
and who yet may be excited to increased 
activity and devotion. And how wisely in 
this respect she has judged, no person will 
doubt, whose duties or bereavements have 
engaged him frequently in the Burial Ser- 
vice. 

The clergyman, for instance, knows full 



62 THE DAILY SPECTACLE 

well that there are those among his flock 
who, living in outward communion with the 
Church, are nevertheless in practice heathens; 
to whom ordinances and sacraments are of- 
fered in vain ; and on whom neither the 
warnings nor in treaties, which from time to 
time he utters to them in private, have the 
slightest effect. Years roll on, and they are 
never seen within the House of God. Sun- 
day and week-day, fast and festival, are all 
one to them: they care for none of these 
things : they are living without God in the 
world, walking after their own lusts, — 
thoughtless or hardened, as the case may be, 
wilful, disobedient, and, to every good work, 
reprobate. 

At length, however, the blow falls. 
Something that they have loved, with all 
the love of which they are capable, is torn 
from them, wife or child, brother or sister, 
kinsman or friend ; the desire of their eyes is 
taken away with a stroke. And what is the 
result ] They are stunned, overwhelmed, 
bewildered. But with minds wholly undis- 
ciplined to submission, untaught to bear a 
cross patiently, to see in God's chastisements 
the evidences of His merey, they bring no 



OF MORTALITY. 63 

spirit of trustful resignation to their trial ; 
they murmur ; they upbraid or cavil at the 
dispensations of Providence ; they give way 
to sullen despondency, or yield themselves up 
to an uncontrolled violence of grief, thinking 
nothing of the design of God in thus visiting 
them, and expending all their care and affec- 
tion on the cold, inanimate corpse, which 
must so soon be delivered up to decay and 
the worm. In such a miserable, reckless, 
unsanctified spirit, they come to discharge the 
duties of sepulture, and with aching eyes to 
see their dead buried out of their sight. It 
is indifferent to them where they go, or what 
they do ; everything is a blank to them. In 
such a temper they are brought involuntarily, 
as it were, and by mere force of circum- 
stances, into that House of God which they 
have so long neglected to attend, and which, 
but for God's patience and long-suffering, 
they might never have been allowed to 
enter again till borne there, for the last time, 
in progress of removal to their own grave. 

Now, to an individual whose mind is 
wholly occupied by his bereavement, who 
is thinking not of himself, but of the cherished 



64 THE DAILY SPECTACLE 

object he has lost, or, if thinking of himself, 
is only lamenting over the hardness of his 
lot, what is the lesson which the Church has 
prepared for his instruction] Need I say 
that it is a doctrine which is the more start- 
ling in proportion as it has been forgotten or 
thrust aside, — the certainty of his own mor- 
tality ? If ever there be a moment in which 
it can be hoped that this tremendous truth 
can be realized in all its fulness in a bad 
man's heart, it is under circumstances such as 
I have supposed, and, therefore, it has been 
well and wisely determined by the Church, 
that they who are mourning for others should 
be solemnly warned that their own time is 
short. 

And with this view she has appointed that, 
upon the entrance of the corpse into the House 
of God, either the Thirty-ninth or the Ninetieth 
Psalm should be read to the congregation. I 
do not mean to infer that the Church has only 
prepared her lessons of man's mortality for 
the sake of such persons as those to whom 
I have just alluded. She consults the wel- 
fare of all, and by all her admonitions are 
needed ; but, as was said before, it is hardly 



OF MORTALITY. 65 

possible to conceive circumstances under 
which her warnings could be brought home 
with greater effect, than when one who has 
lived for this life only is reminded, in the 
midst of a scene of death, of his own speedily- 
approaching dissolution. It compels him to 
stand still and contemplate for a time, at 
least, what hitherto he has determinedly fled 
away from. It gives the sternness of reality 
to what as yet has been only a painful dream. 
Hitherto the sinner, it may be, has only 
heard of death by the hearing of the ear, but 
now his eye seeth the enemy of our race ; and 
he feels the touch of that cold, withering 
finger laid upon him, as he hears in the 
words of the Scriptures of Truth what sounds 
to him like his own death-warrant. 

It is not necessary for our present purpose 
to examine each of these appointed psalms 
separately, with the view of explaining them 
verse by verse ; my object is to direct your 
attention to the general principles contained 
in them. And it is very remarkable that 
although, as is believed, they were written 
by two different persons, at a long interval, 
and with reference to events which had no 

g 2 



66 THE DAILY SPECTACLE 

connection with each other, yet in both the 
same great doctrines are developed, and in a 
strikingly similar manner ; and these doc- 
trines are the vanity and shortness of human 
life, and the occasion which sin has given to 
disease and death. The Thirty-ninth Psalm, 
as having been composed by David upon the 
death of Absalom, seems most appropriate to 
be read at the funerals of those whose sun 
has gone down while it was yet day ; while the 
Ninetieth, of which Moses is believed to have 
been the author, and which is said to have 
been written by him in commemoration of 
that decree by which the Israelites were con- 
demned to protracted w T anderings in the wil- 
derness, and a long exclusion from the pro- 
mised land, is perhaps most suitably used 
when some aged pilgrim is to be consigned 
to his resting-place. Yet whichever be used, 
both speak the same language. Both de- 
clare, in the plainest and most unequivocal 
manner, that there is no abiding here, — that 
we are all fleetly passing away, — that the 
time of departure is uncertain, — that the life 
of those, even, who are earliest called hence 
is vanity, and they who linger longest have 



OF MORTALITY. 67 

only a longer share of labour and sorrow. 
" Thou hast made my days, as it were, a span 
long," says the Psalm of David, " and mine 
age is even as nothing in respect of Thee; 
and verily every man living is altogether 
vanity. For man walketh in a vain shadow, 
and disquieteth himself in vain : he heapeth 
up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather 
them .... I am a stranger with Thee, and a 
sojourner, as all my fathers were." 

ie Thou turnest man to destruction," saith 
the Psalm of Moses. " As soon as Thou 
scatterest them, they are even as a sleep, and 
fade away suddenly like the grass. In the 
morning it is green and groweth up : but in 
the evening it is cut down, dried up, and 
withered. . . .We bring our years to an end, 
as it were a tale that is told. The days of 
our age are three score years and ten ; and 
though men be so strong that they come to 
four-score years : yet is their strength then 
but labour and sorrow ; so soon passeth it 
away, and we are gone." 

Thus is the lesson conveyed to us that de- 
cay and death are bound up with our very 
being, and that all things from without are, 



68 THE DAILY SPECTACLE 

as it were, infecting us with death. " Death," 
to use the words of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, 
" reigns in all the portions of our time. The 
autumn, with its fruits, provides disorders 
for us ; and the winter's cold turns them into 
sharp diseases ; and the spring brings flowers 
to strew our hearse ; and the summer gives 
green turf and brambles to bind upon our 
graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and 
agues, are the four quarters of the year, and 
all minister to death ; and you can go no 
whither, but you tread upon a dead man's 
bones." 

And as all external agencies are in some 
sense or other ministering to our decay, so is 
the complicated machinery within us. When 
we reflect upon the damage which accrues to 
our whole system, from any failure in the 
functions of a single organ ; when we consi- 
der the multiplicity of action going on with- 
in us, and how slight an accident is capable 
of deranging it, the wonder is, not that we 
so soon bring our years to an end, but that 
we live from hour to hour. Miracle of mi- 
racles as in its construction is the human 
frame, that frame is not intended to endure 



OF MORTALITY. 69 

for more than a certain season, and accord- 
ingly we bring into the world with us the 
seeds of future decay ; and the very materials 
of which we are composed have a direct ten- 
dency to corruption. As S. Bernard says, 
" If we look to see what is within us, we 
shall find that we are but so many sacks of 
filth, fit meat for the worms of the earth to 
diet on." 1 

O that men were wise, that they would 
understand this, that they would consider 
their latter end! that they would learn to 
die daily, that they would have the four last 
things, Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, 
continually before them ; at any rate, so far 
as this, that they should commence no day 
without endeavouring to realize to themselves 
that that day may be their last on earth ; that 
they should never lay themselves down to 
sleep without such preparation as is meet for 
persons who believe that they may wake 
from that sleep in another world. But since 

1 " Nihil aliud est homo quam sperma foetidum, saccus ster- 
corum, cibus vermium. 
" Post hominem vermis, post vermem fcetor et horror ; 
" Sic in non hominem vertitur omnis homo." 

S. Bernard, Medit. cap. iii. 



70 THE DAILY SPECTACLE 

men in general are so far from doing this, 
that they seem to need perpetual monitors 
to remind them that they are to die at all, it 
may well be a source of thankfulness to us 
that the Church seizes an opportunity the 
most favourable that can be imagined (be- 
cause we cannot readily put the thought 
away from us), for impressing on us that we 
shall ourselves soon be as the corpse we are 
committing to the grave, and which, though 
extended in all the nothingness and impo- 
tence of death, yet preacheth by its very 
silence on " the vanity, the brevity, the 
transitoriness, the uncertainty of human 
things." 

But the shortness and uncertainty of life, 
and the certainty of death, are not the only 
things which are brought before us in these 
psalms ; for we are there taught what it is 
which gives to life its misery, and to death 
its sting, — that both owe their origin to Sin ; 
that Sin is that which excites the wrath of 
the All-Pure and All-Holy against us, and 
that that wrath is the cause of those adversi- 
ties which happen to the body, and which 
reduce it to decay and dissolution at last. 



OF MORTALITY. 71 

" Take thy plague away from me,'' saith the 
author of the Thirty-ninth Psalm. " I am 
even consumed by means of thy heavy hand." 
And then he goes on to shew the nature of 
the plague inflicted, and why the hand of his 
compassionate Father was made heavy : 
" When Thou with rebukes dost chasten 
man for sin, thou makest his beauty to con- 
sume away, like as it were a moth fretting a 
garment." The moth fretting a garment, — 
eating into its fair colours, cankering its tex- 
ture, — silently and secretly, unsuspected and 
unobserved, doing its work of destruction, — 
what can be a truer or more painful illustra- 
tion of the effects of sin, of the insidious 
approach of lingering disease and inevitable 
death ] So too in the Ninetieth Psalm, the 
same awful truth is acknowledged ; " We 
consume away in Thy displeasure, and are 
afraid at Thy wrathful indignation. Thou 
hast set our misdeeds before Thee, and our 
secret sins in the light of Thy countenance. 
For when Thou art angry all our days are 
gone ; we bring our years to an end, as it 
were a tale that is told." 

Thus Moses and David unite in speaking 



72 THE DAILY SPECTACLE 

of the results of that miserable act of our 
forefather Adam, that lusting led to sin, and 
sin to death. But the Christian who hears 
these psalms read cannot, it is to be presumed* 
forget that herein the half is not told him, 
that the elder covenant was founded upon a 
system of temporal rewards and punishments, 
and that beyond them it only looked through 
a glass darkly. To the Jew, indeed, as well 
as to the Christian, the law ever was that 
the wages of sin is death, but to the latter is 
revealed the doctrine of the Second death, 
the always dying, yet never dead, a com- 
panionship with the worm that dieth not, and 
with fires that are never quenched, which 
adds a thousand- fold, yea, in an infinite mea- 
sure, to the apprehension with which the 
first death is viewed, because it gives, as it 
were, a guage by which we can estimate the 
exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the intensity 
of the hatred which God bears it. If the 
Jew sinned, he sinned against light and warn- 
ings, and received the recompense which was 
meet for his transgression. But if God 
spared not him, what, let us ask ourselves, is 
likely to be the fate of those, who, after 



OF MORTALITY. 73 

being fully acquainted with God's hatred of 
sin, and its eternal punishment in a world 
beyond the grave, allow it to reign in their 
mortal bodies *? who, knowing what sin has 
cost, and having vowed thereupon utterly 
to renounce and forsake it, deliberately 
break their vows \ who, believing that it was 
in order to redeem them individually, that 
the Lord of Life and Glory left His throne in 
heaven, and was made man, that for them 
He bore the hardest lot which any one of 
woman born hath endured, that for them He 
submitted to be betrayed, and evil-intreated, 
to be mocked, and scourged, and spit upon, 
and crucified ; that it was on their account 
that His agony was, as it were, great drops 
of blood falling to the ground, that they, in 
one sense, platted the crown of thorns which 
wounded His anointed Head, that they 
drove the nails into His Hands and Feet, 
that they sharpened the spear that pierced 
His Side, — what, I say, is likely to be the 
fate of those who knowing these things 
do all that in them lies to crucify the 
Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open 
shame, by yielding themselves servants to 

H 



74 THE DAILY SPECTACLE 

Satan, and wilfully living in those sins from 
■which He died to redeem them % 

These are awful thoughts for even the 
most devoted of God's servants : what, then, 
must they be to those on whom the remem- 
brance of their own mortality has been forced 
unwillingly, by their attendance at the fune- 
ral of some one whom they have dearly 
loved % 

God is not a man that He should lie, nor 
the son of man that He should repent. Hath 
He said, and shall He not do it; hath He 
sworn, and shall He not bring it to pass % 
His decrees are immutable as Himself: and 
how immutable He is, His Own Word testi- 
fies. He is "the same yesterday, to-day, and 
for ever." He is from "everlasting to ever- 
lasting," the "Alpha and Omega" ie the first 
and the last." Or as it has been expressed 
in these very Psalms, " Lord, Thou hast been 
our refuge from one generation to another. 
Before the mountains were brought forth, or 
ever the earth and the world were made ; 
Thou art God from everlasting and world 
without end .... for a thousand years in Thy 
sight are but as yesterday ; seeing that is 
past as a watch in the night." 



OF MORTALITY. 75 

Well then does it become us all to join in 
the Psalmist's prayer, yea, to offer it con- 
tinually, that He in Whose Hands are the 
issues of life and death, Whose justice is im- 
mutable, and Whose mercy is only to be 
secured before the grave receives us, would 
not cut us down in the midst of our folly, 
but bring us by His grace and mercy to re- 
pentance, would help us in this our day to 
take heed unto the things which belong unto 
our peace, before they are for ever hidden 
from our eyes. 

fi Lord, let me know mine end, and the 
number of my days, that I may be certified 
how long I have to live. . . .Hear my prayer, 
O Lord, and with Thine Ears consider my 
calling : hold not Thy peace at my tears. 
For I am a stranger with Thee, and a so- 
journer as all my fathers were. O spare me 
a little that I may recover my strength, be- 
fore I go hence, and be no more seen t" 



LECTURE V. 



THE PROPER LESSON. 



W)t Besurmtton of ©ijrtst ti)e proof antt guarantee of 
our oton. 



1 Corinthians xv. 21, 22. 

" Since by man came death, by man came also 
the resurrection of the dead. for as in adam all 
die, even so in christ shall all be made alive." 

The course of meditation which we are pur- 
suing has now brought us to that portion of 
the Burial Service wherein the Church sets 
before her children the fullest exposition of 
the doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead 
contained in Holy Scripture, — the Lesson, 
namely, taken out of the fifteenth chapter of 
the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and ap- 

h2 



78 THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, 

pointed to be read at the conclusion of those 
psalms which we have lately been consider- 
ing. 

The psalms being taken out of the Old 
Testament, speak rather the language of the 
first Covenant than of the second : they tell 
of the mortality of man, of the shortness and 
uncertainty of his existence, and his many 
sorrows ; they point out these things as the 
results of God's displeasure ; they trace that 
displeasure to its source, the sinfulness of 
man ; and, finally, they deprecate the just 
vengeance of the Most High, and implore 
His mercy. 

But the Lesson, being taken out of the 
New Testament adopts a different tone, and 
addresses itself to the ear of faith in words 
the most sublime and consolatory that can be 
imagined, the best adapted to allay the grief 
of the Christian mourner, and to excite sur- 
vivors to increased diligence in the work of 
preparation against that time in which their 
own change will come. 

It is recorded in the acts of the Apostles, 
that when S. Paul preached at Athens the 



A PROOF OF OUR OWN. 79 

doctrine of the Resurrection, he was received 
with derision or indifference. " When they 
heard of the resurrection of the dead, some 
mocked." — " What will this babbler say V 
was their inquiry ; while others said, "We 
will hear thee again of this matter." Now, 
we may fairly presume that the feelings of 
contempt thus exhibited by the Athenians 
would be shared to a great extent by the in- 
habitants of all the other heathen cities in 
which the Apostle preached. The better 
educated and more reflecting among the 
heathen did not doubt the immortality of the 
soul, but they looked upon the body as its 
dungeon and prison-house, in which it was 
fettered and bound to earth ; and they judged 
its greatest happiness would be when death 
had freed it from its fleshy trammels for ever. 
Accordingly, the doctrine of the Resurrection 
of the Body, and its re-union with the soul 
at the last day, was an offence and scandal 
to them. It -was as staggering to their pre- 
judices as to their reason. It was a thing 
which they could have no wish to find true, 
until they had turned from darkness to light, 
and cast aside the miserable superstitions of 
heathenism for the faith of the Gospel. 



80 THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, 

It is evident that the Corinthians had 
come no nearer to the truth than the other 
people of Greece; and even after S. Paul had 
preached to them (as we know he did for a 
year and a half), and had converted many of 
them, still they fondly clung to their ancient 
errors, and perverted or failed to receive the 
teaching of the Apostle on this subject. 
Hence, most happily for the Church in all 
future time, it became needful that S. Paul, 
taught by the Holy Ghost, should set the 
doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead 
fully before them, and corroborate it by such 
arguments and evidence as were needful to 
prepare the way for its reception into the 
darkened and bewildered hearts of men. 
And the method which the Apostle takes to 
effect his object is, by shewing first that 
Christ died and rose again, and that our re- 
surrection is a necessary consequence of His. 

It would be manifestly impossible, in the 
progress of a single discourse, to do more 
than point out the general manner in which 
S. Paul arrives at his conclusion. Not a 
verse, — scarce a word of this most wondrous 
revelation, but demands to be weighed and 



A PROOF OF OUR OWN. 81 

meditated upon with all the care and rever- 
ence of which we are capable ; and there is 
hardly a sentence, certainly no division, of 
the argument but contains either directly, or 
by implication, an intimation of truths at 
which the unenlightened heart of man could 
never have arrived, and most of which, even 
when made known, are (in their full extent) 
utterly beyond his present comprehension, and 
are only to be received in the thankfulness of 
adoring faith. 

Some of the principal of these we shall 
consider hereafter ; at present I must confine 
myself to a general outline of the Apostle's 
argument concerning the resurrection of the 
dead, as contained in that portion of the 
chapter which is appointed for the lesson of 
the Burial Service. 

It is upon the fact of our Blessed Lord's 
Resurrection that the whole superstructure of 
our faith is built. His Own declaration being, 
" I lay down My life, that I may take it again. 
No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it 
down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, 
and I have power to take it again," — in the 
fact of the resurrection was the test of His 



82 THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, 

Messiahship. If He had not risen, however 
valuable His example might have been to us, 
we should have received no benefit beyond 
it : we should have had no satisfactory evi- 
dence that He was more than a prophet, 
mighty in word and deed, before God and 
all the people : we should have had no evidence 
of the merit of His death as a propitiatory 
sacrifice : we could not have known with cer- 
tainty either that He had power to make an 
atonement, or that, when made, the Al- 
mighty Father had accepted it. It is thus 
that S. Paul argues: "If Christ be not 
risen," saith he, "then is our preaching vain, 

and your faith is also vain If Christ be 

not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in 
your sins. Then they also which are fallen 
asleep in Christ are perished." 

Accordingly, he speaks to the Corinthians 
of the evidence, which at his first coming 
among them he had laid before them, teach- 
ing the certainty of the Lord's resurrection as 
his "Gospel," — as those good tidings of 
great joy on which all the other glorious doc- 
trines of redemption were grounded. And 
good right had he so to speak, for it is to 



A PROOF OF OUR OWN. 83 

that resurrection that each individual Chris- 
tian owes his Regeneration, his Justification, 
his Sanctification ; — his Regeneration, for the 
Scripture testifieth, that " the God and Fa- 
ther of our Lord Jesus Christ hath, accord- 
ing to His abundant mercy, begotten us 
again unto a lively hope by the resurrection 
of Jesus Christ from the dead :" — his Justifi- 
cation, for the same Scriptures bear witness, 
that the Son of God tl was delivered for our 
offences, and was raised again for our justifi- 
cation:" — his Sanctification, for not less 
clearly has it been intimated to us, that we 
were " buried with Him in Baptism, wherein 
also we are risen with Him, through the 
faith of the operation of God, Who hath 
raised Him from the dead ; — that rt when we 
were dead" in trespasses and sins, "God 
quickened us together with Christ ;" — " that 
like as Christ was raised up from the dead 
by the glory of the Father, even so we also 
should walk in newness of life." 1 

Such being some of the results of the re- 
surrection of Christ to all who are called by 
His name, S. Paul commences his argument 

1 See Barrow's Sermons. Vol. II. Serai. 30, p. 425, 426. 
(Edit. Folio, 1686.) 



84 THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, 

by establishing the proof of the certainty of 
the resurrection, and by appealing to the 
testimony of persons then living, to whom 
it had been vouchsafed to see the Redeemer 
of the World after that He had risen from 
the dead. ie He was seen of Cephas ; then 
of the twelve ; after that, he was seen of 
above five hundred brethren at once ; of 
whom the greater part remain unto this pre- 
sent, but some are fallen asleep. After that, 
He was seen of James; then of all the 
Apostles. And last of all, He was seen of 
me also." 

Having thus broadly asserted and main- 
tained the fact of our Lord's resurrection, S. 
Paul proceeds to build up that argument on 
which our hopes, as Christians, depend, and 
without which, not merely would this world 
be (what it must be) a vale of tears to us, 
but, as the Apostle Himself expresses it, we 
should be " of all men most miserable." 

The heads of S. Paul's discourse, then, as 
contained in the portion of the chapter which 
is appointed for the burial lesson, are these. 1 
First, the certainty of man's resurrection is 

1 The following abstract is mainly taken from Comber, Vol. 
IV. p. 409, 410. (Oxford, 1841.) 



A PROOF OF OUR OWN. 85 

proved; secondly, the questions suggesting 
themselves to the minds of persons receiving 
the doctrine are answered and resolved ; and, 
thirdly, comes the practical application to 
the hearts and consciences of individuals. 

I. First, the resurrection of man is proved 
to be certain ; first from the certainty of its 
cause, the resurrection of Christ. — " Christ 
is risen from the dead, and become the first 
fruits of them that slept. For since by 
man came death, by man came also the resur- 
rection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, 
even so in Christ shall all be made alive. " 
Secondly, it is proved from that which neces- 
sarily results from the resurrection of Christ, 
the establishment of the Mediatorial kingdom 
universally, — " He must reign till He hath 
put all enemies under His feet." Thirdly, it 
is proved by the readiness with which Chris- 
tians suffer in the hope of it, and by the wicked- 
ness and folly of those that disbelieve it. 

II. The resurrection of the body being 
thus held to be proved, the second task pro- 
posed to himself by the Apostle commences, — 
that, namely, of resolving the queries relating 
to it. And by way of reply to those who 



86 THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, 

had asked " How are the dead raised up, 
and with what body do they come 1" it is 
explained by the illustration of the buried 
grain, apparently dead, and anon putting 
forth the living blade, that the bodies which 
shall be re-united to their souls in the day of 
final resurrection shall be the same in sub- 
stance, though improved in qualities. In 
answer to other inquiries, he treats of the 
manner of the resurrection, and the accom- 
paniments of that stupendous event, — the 
voice of the Archangel and the trump of 
God,— the instantaneous change which shall 
come over quick and dead, — the assumption 
of incorruption by corruption, and of immor- 
tality by that which is mortal. Lastly, in 
reply to another class of questions, he tells 
of the effect following the resurrection, 
namely, the absolute conquest of death, that 
"then shall be brought to pass the saying that 
is written, Death is swallowed up in victory." 
IIL And then, as a conclusion of the 
whole, the Apostle breaks forth into a strain 
of triumph over the vanquished enemy of our 
race, — of thanksgiving to the Author of so 
complete and glorious a victory, — and into an 



A PROOF OF OUR OWN. 87 

exhortation to all believers to persevere in 
faith, and all good works. 

Such, in few words, is an outline of one 
of the most wondrous passages that are to be 
found in the whole compass of the Word of 
God ; and quite inadequate as it is, and in- 
deed as every attempt must be on the part 
of any uninspired person, to condense the 
glowing language of a revelation, in which 
every word seems to issue from a tongue of 
living fire, still it will answer the purpose 
for which it is intended, that, namely, of 
showing you how S. Paul builds the whole 
superstructure of Christian doctrine upon the 
foundation that the resurrection of Christ is 
the proof and evidence of our own. 

We, who, through God's great mercy, 
have been born in the bosom of the Catholic 
Church, have been so early taught to con- 
sider the connection between these two doc- 
trines as cause and effect, that perhaps we 
have hardly given ourselves the trouble to con- 
der why they have come to be so considered. 
Yet, if such be the case, we have suffered 
loss ; for not only would our faith be thereby 
confirmed, but we should be led to deeper 



88 THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, 

views than perhaps we have attained to both 
with respect to the wonders and mercies of 
the scheme of Redemption. For let us briefly 
consider what those things are which were 
established by the resurrection of Christ, and 
how they bear upon our own; and let us 
further endeavour to conceive (by way of 
testing the deadness and apathy of our own 
feelings) how the good tidings which S. 
Paul preached must have sounded in the ears 
of men to whom, hitherto, all beyond the 
grave was utter darkness and uncertainty. 
First, if Christ died, and was buried, and then 
rose again, there was at once an end of the 
apparent impossibility that the soul, once 
separated from the body, could ever return 
to it. It was as much against what had 
hitherto seemed the law of nature that the 
departed spirit should come back on the third 
day to revivify its fleshly tabernacle, as that 
the scattered dust of millions, who for cen- 
turies had been resolved into the elements of 
which they were composed, should be one day 
collected together again and re-assume its 
original forms. The one difficulty was not 
greater than the other, and, therefore, when 



A PROOF OF OUR OWN. 89 

the one was removed, there was nothing in 
the way of the other. If the soul of Christ 
was restored to His Body, why should it be 
any longer thought an impossible thing that 
all other bodies, over which death had ex- 
ercised his power, should, if it so pleased 
God, be enabled to put on life and vigour, 
and re-admit the spirit which had departed 
from them % 

But here it might be said, that the cases 
were so different in themselves that no com- 
parison could -safely be drawn between them, 
and that while no one would be disposed to 
question the Almighty's power to raise the 
dead, it might be very fairly doubted whether 
it would be His pleasure to do so. 

Then, however, comes the reply, that the 
fact of our Lord's resurrection is of itself an 
evidence as touching the pleasure of the Most 
High on this very subject. For why was it 
that the Eternal Son of God took our nature 
upon Him at all, — why was it that He suf- 
fered, and agonized, and hung upon the ac- 
cursed tree, and bowed His anointed Head 
and gave up the ghost, unless it were that by 
that most precious blood-shedding and death 

i2 



90 THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, 

He should acquire, in right of His one, full, 
perfect, and sufficient oblation and satisfac- 
tion, for the sins of the whole world, some 
inestimable privileges for the benefit of that 
race of whose nature He had voluntarily be- 
come partaker 1 And what was that privi- 
lege but this, even that we should rise with 
Him. The law then went forth, that " as in 
Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made 
alive." " He," saith S. Chrysostom, "by 
His resurrection dissolved the tyranny of 
death, and with Himself raised up the whole 
world." " By the pledge of His resurrection," 
writes another Father of the Church (S. Am- 
brose), " He loosed the bands of helL" By 
His resurrection not only the natural body of 
Christ was raised, but the mystical body 
also ; each member of His Church was 
therein restored to life, being thoroughly 
rescued from the bondage of corruption, and 
translated into a state of immortality. 1 

As are the first fruits so is the lump. The 
first fruits being holy, the lump also is holy. 
If He rose as the first fruits, the whole lump 
or mass of mankind must also arise. " Since 
by man came death, by man came also the 

1 Barrow's Serm. ubi. sup. 



A PROOF OF OUR OWN. 91 

resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all 
die, even so in Christ shall all be made 
alive." " That is," as Bishop Beveridge ex- 
plains it, "all mankind shall as certainly 
rise again to life in Christ the second Adam, 
as they died in the first ; and all by virtue of 
His resurrection from the dead, which there- 
fore is not only the pattern and example, but 
the cause of ours : and such a cause that it 
cannot but take effect. But all men that 
die shall as certainly rise again, as Christ did 
so, and because He did so." Christ rose 
again, and thereby He set His seal that those 
words are true which He spake unto the 
Jews who sought to slay Him, "The hour is 
coming in which all that are in the graves 
shall hear His voice, and shall come forth ; 
they that have done good unto the resurrec- 
tion of life ; and they that have done evil 
unto the resurrection of damnation." 

My brethren, I can say nothing which can 
add to the awfulness of those words. I can 
use no argument to induce you to listen 
to them which you have not heard from your 
youth up. You must die. You must rise 
again. Your rising must be a resurrection 



92 THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 

unto life, — or a resurrection unto damnation. 
Are you living as men whose lives may ter- 
minate at any moment % Are you striving to 
realize to yourselves continually what a re- 
surrection to damnation implies ] Have you 
thought what it must be to dwell with ever- 
lasting burnings'? Have you thought on 
the joys prepared for them who truly believe 
in Christ, and who look for, and love His 
appearing % Have you made your choice be*- 
tween heaven and Hell ] Are you serving 
God, or yielding yourselves to His enemy 
and your own \ 

if Saviour of the World, Who, by Thy 
Cross and precious Blood, hast redeemed us, 
save us, and help us, we humbly beseech 
Thee, O Lord!" 



LECTURE VI. 

THE PROPER LESSON CONTINUED. 

W$t ttCa. of all time, ^part 3E. 

2 Corinthians xv. 51, 52. 
"Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all 

SLEEP, BUT WE SHALL ALL BE CHANGED, IN A MOMENT, 
IN THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE, AT THE LAST TRUMP: 
FOR THE TRUMPET SHALL SOUND, AND THE DEAD SHALL 
BE RAISED INCORRUPTIBLE, AND WE SHALL BE CHANGED." 

I suppose that I am only expressing a feel- 
ing in which all earnest-minded persons par- 
ticipate, when I say that there are passages 
in the Bible so very awful and overwhelm- 
ing, that one altogether shrinks from speak- 
ing about them : we can meditate upon them 
in the silence and darkness of the night ; or 
with our eyes closed and the world shut out, 
in the privacy of our closets; but in propor- 



94 THE END OF 

tion as we have cultivated a reverential spirit 
shall we, of our own free will at least, avoid 
doing more. We shall have so much fear of 
being rash and presumptuous ; we shall be 
so painfully aware of the uncleanness of our 
lips, and the corruption in our hearts, shall 
feel so strongly the danger of adding to, or 
diminishing from, the Word of God, by bring- 
ing our narrow prejudices and foolish imagi- 
nations in contact with it, and shall have 
such an especial dread lest any perversions 
or misconceptions of ours, with respect to it, 
should contribute to create or foster a prepos- 
session against the reception of it in the 
minds of irreligious or profane persons, — we 
shall, I say, have so much fear of rendering 
the Word of God of none effect through any 
of these causes, that we shall rather ponder 
over its more awful revelations in silence, and 
keep them in our hearts, than discuss them, 
or even speak of them at all, except where 
obliged to do so as a duty. 

But if this be the feeling with which we 
approach passages of Scripture concerning 
which we have no intimation given us that 
they are beyond our comprehension, how 



ALL TIME. 95 

great will be the hesitation with which we 
shall speak upon a subject whereof the 
Apostle, writing under the direct teaching of 
the Holy Ghost, declares it to be " a mys- 
tery." True, while he uses the expression 
he is in the very act of throwing light on 
what had been involved in deep darkness be- 
fore ; but men, ere now, have been blinded 
by excess of light, and he who keeps his 
eyes fixed on the sun may miss his way as 
effectually as he who wanders in darkest 
midnight. 

The revelation made by S. Paul, while, as 
a doctrine to be received with implicit faith, 
it is among the chiefest glories and consola- 
tions of Christianity, contains in it so many 
things that are utterly above our comprehen- 
sion, that it seems almost irreverent to speak 
about them at all, seeing that the moment we 
begin to talk of them it is next to impossible 
to avoid entering into speculations with re- 
spect to them, and so running the risk of 
coming into the number of those offenders 
against God who " intrude into those things 
which they have not seen, vainly puffed up 
by their fleshly mind." 



96 THE END OF 

Nevertheless,, if there be one subject which 
more than another the private Christian 
ought to keep continually before his own 
mind, and which the Christian Priest 
should continually bring before his flock, it 
is, that God " hath appointed a day in the 
which He will judge the world in righteous- 
ness by that Man Whom He hath ordained ; 
whereof He hath given assurance unto all 
men, in that He hath raised Him from the 
dead." 

That we shall each of us rise again in our 
bodies to give an account of our own works, 
that we shall be called from our graves by the 
voice of the Son of God, and that our bodies, 
so raised, shall be subjected to a change 
which shall fit them for an eternity of joy or 
woe, — these are truths which, if thoroughly 
received and believed, will be more powerful 
to influence men's minds to good, than any 
others which are to be found in the whole 
compass of revelation. 

But they are truths which men, even while 
they admit them, are glad to keep out of their 
thoughts ; they are truths so stern that every 
easy, popular form of religion, will endeavour 



ALL TIME. 97 

to find some expedient to escape from their 
force and authority; and they are truths 
which become more and more important to 
be inculcated in proportion as there is a ten- 
dency to soften them down and explain away 
their exceeding awfulness. 

To think too much about the judgment-day 
is manifestly impossible, but to think too 
little about it is, I fear, the prevailing sin of 
these times. We make large and loud pro- 
fessions, and talk much about our faith and 
feelings, and finding this no very difficult 
matter, we content ourselves without ad- 
vancing further, and do not care to remem- 
ber that on the morning of the general resur- 
rection if the great concerning question will 
be, not what we have believed more than 
others, nor what we have professed more 
than others, but what we have done. m 

Now let us, for awhile, put from us these 
evil and perilous ways of thought, and let 
us solemnly consider the mystery unfolded 
to us in the text. It is high as heaven, and 
deep as hell ; a matter on which the more 
we think, the more overwhelming does it ap- 

1 South. 

K 



98 THE END OF 

pear, the more above our conceptions, and 
the power of words to speak of it aright. 
Yet, if we keep close to the language of 
Scripture, it is to be hoped that we shall not 
wander from the meaning of Scripture, and 
that what is said will be said reverently, and 
tend to edifying- God grant that so it may 
be! 

We are told in the Gospels that when our 
Blessed Lord had made known to His disci- 
ples the impending destruction and desolation 
of the Holy City, Peter, and James, and 
John, and Andrew came to Him privately, 
and inquired of Him, "Tell us when shall 
these things be % and what shall be the sign 
of Thy coming, and of the end of the world V 
thus intimating their belief that these events 
would be contemporaneous, and, as it should 
seem, possessed of the idea that the Temple 
and Jewish polity would last till the final 
consummation of all things. 

Our Saviour, as we know, did not think 
proper to dispel their misapprehensions by 
alluding to a distinction between these 
events, and, in His reply to their inquiry, 



ALL TIME. 99 

blended in one prophecy all that He thought 
proper to reveal with respect to both. He 
would not indulge their curiosity ; and, in- 
deed, distinctly declared to them that, as the 
Son of Man, it came not within the compass 
of His office and commission to reveal the 
deep secret which was hidden in the bosom 
of the Eternal Godhead: " Of that day and 
that hour," said He, " knoweth no man, no, 
not the angels which are in heaven, neither 
the Son, but the Father." Yet, as was ever 
His wont under similar circumstances, the 
question which He would not answer directly, 
elicited an indirect reply which gave to His 
followers all that they really needed, by 
teaching them their duties with respect to 
that coming event to which they had alluded. 
" Take heed," was His first advice, " that no 
man deceive you:" and then He pointed 
out the sources from whence deception was 
likely to arise, and what would be the signs 
and evidences of His Advent in which they 
could not be mistaken. " Watch, therefore," 
was His second advice, "for ye know not 
what hour your Lord doth come," — " at even, 
or at midnight, or at the cock crowing, or 



100 THE END OF 

in the morning : lest coming suddenly he find 
you sleeping. And what I say unto you, I say 
unto all, Watch." 

Thus it became henceforward the duty of 
all who believed in His Name, to be always 
watching both over themselves, and for the 
unknown day, and to be ever looking out for 
those signs which should herald in its ap- 
proach. And as a further incitement to do 
so, He more than once unequivocally de- 
clared to those who followed Him, that in 
spite of these His warnings, and the tokens 
which He had pointed out, the world should 
be taken by surprise at last ; that men would 
be going on, eating and drinking, marrying 
and giving in marrage, just as the old world 
did till the day that Noah entered into the 
ark, and the flood came and destroyed them 
all; that that day should come "unawares," 
" as a thief in the night," " as a snare on all 
them that dwell on the face of the earth." 

And judging of the future by the present, 
with all the experience of the past to teach 
us that as the world has daily been growing 
older, it has grown more and more wicked, 
it requires no great stretch of faith to believe 
that such will be the state of things. If in 



ALL TIME. 101 

this hour in which I am addressing you the 
end of time should come, is there one of us 
who would not be taken by surprise \ 

Surely we shall do well to remember that 
a general carelessness and want of watchful- 
ness are to be among the signs of the last 
Advent. " In such an hour as ye think not 
the Son of Man cometh." 

But it may be said, " We at least are safe 
at this moment, because those preliminary 
events have not yet taken place, which ac- 
cording to the sure word of prophecy are to 
be the precursors of the last day." I reply 
that this very feeling of security is a strong 
evidence that we are insecure, because it is 
precisely at an hour in which we do not ex- 
pect Him, and feel satisfied that He will not 
come, that He will come. And let me ask, 
how can we be so very sure that we read the 
prophecies aright, and that even if we do 
read them aright, they may not be quietly 
receiving their accomplishment without our 
suspecting it % Indeed, if we be wise, we 
shall consider this, that not a single age has 
passed since our Lord delivered His predic- 
tion, but the aspects of the world and of the 

k2 



102 THE END OF 

Church have been such, that had He ap- 
peared in any one of them, the language of 
all preceding prophecy might have been held 
to be fulfilled. And the more we study the 
history of God's past visitations of the earth, 
the more shall we be inclined to believe that 
things will go on much as they are to the 
very last moment ; that though men shall 
live in the midst of signs and prodigies, they 
shall fail to see them, or make account of 
them; and that those things which are 
known to be tokens of His coming will no 
more induce the majority of those who do 
perceive them then to prepare to meet their 
God, than they do now. 

For what, after all, are to be the chief evi- 
dences of His approach] Are they not 
these, — the prevalence of deceivers and false 
teachers, lawlessness and disobedience, op- 
pression of the Church by the world and its 
rulers, distress among the nations, great in- 
testine troubles, general confusion and per- 
plexity, men's hearts failing them for fear, 
and for looking after those things which are 
coming on the earth \ 

Now can any reflecting and observant per- 



ALL TIME. 103 

son look upon the actual state of things in 
the world, and still more, upon the germs and 
tendency of a spirit not yet fully developed, 
though still manifest and not to be mistaken? 
without being forced to admit that if those 
which I have stated be the chief tokens of the 
approaching advent of Him Who is Judge of 
quick and dead, we have no security against 
that coming for a single hour. And the less 
we anticipate His immediate advent, the 
more likely is He to be at our very doors. 

Nevertheless, on the whole, there do ap- 
pear to be sufficient grounds for entertaining 
the belief, that before the great and terrible 
day of the Lord shall come, some prophecies 
will be more fully accomplished than they have 
yet been. And here I do not allude to the 
prediction that the Gospel must first be 
preached in all the world, because I think 
the question may fairly be raised whether, 
considering the usual tenor of God's dealings 
with men, it is likely that there should be 
any more conspicuous invitation to the na- 
tions of the earth to enter the true fold than 
is the case at present, — whether, though the 
offer may have been universal, the acceptance 



104 THE END OF 

may be greater than it has yet been. God 
never forces His gifts on those who are un- 
willing to receive them. 

Nor, again, would I build upon that which 
is such a bright, poetic vision to many 
minds, — the restoration of the Jews to the 
land of their fathers, — the earthly Canaan. 
I am not disputing that the prophecy may 
have a literal fulfilment in the grant of a 
temporal as well as of an eternal rest : many 
wise and holy men entertain this hope : still 
there are questions involved in it which make 
it debateable ground, and therefore I would 
not build upon it. 

There is, however, one event concerning 
which, as the immediate precursor of the end 
of the world, we cannot so easily be mis- 
taken, and that is the coming of Antichrist. 

Here, indeed, as on many other points, 
what will be is only a fuller developement of 
what has been already. Eighteen hundred 
years ago there were "many Antichrists," 
and we have evidence enough on all sides to 
shew that the Antichristian spirit has been 
spreading and strengthening. 

Still, the whole tenor of Christian pro- 



ALL TIME. 105 

phecy seems to point out that before the 
world ends, the two great principles of good 
and evil shall he arrayed against one another 
with a clearness and distinctness such as hi- 
therto, among the mingled motives of men, 
have never been witnessed; that the whole 
world shall be the battle-field of this tre- 
mendous contest ; that in preparation for it 
the whole existing frame and fabric of society 
shall be uprooted and levelled; that civil 
strife shall tear asunder those whom God 
hath made "of one blood," that nation shall 
rise against nation, and kingdom against 
kingdom ; that there shall have been a vast, 
wide-spreading and fatal apostacy from the 
truth, that faith shall have almost vanished from 
the earth, that persecution and cruel usage of 
the Catholic Church shall be carried to a height 
unknown in all the terrible experience of the 
past ; that then shall be great and universal 
tribulation, " a time of trouble such as never 
was since there was a nation even to that 
same time ;" that in the midst of this general 
confusion and disruption of all things, the 
last form of Antichrist shall appear, " that 
man of sin shall be revealed, the son of per- 



106 THE END OF 

dition, who shall oppose and exalt himself 
above all that is called God, or that is wor- 
shipped;" that for a season he shall ravage 
the earth ; that for the elect's sake, and lest 
no flesh shall be saved, that time shall be 
shortened ; and that in the moment of his 
greatest apparent power, he shall be blasted 
and overthrown, for the sign of the Son of 
Man shall appear in heaven ; the sign of Him 
Who shall consume that wicked one with the 
Spirit of His Mouth, and shall destroy Him 
with the brightness of His coming. 

Such, as we gather them from Holy Writ, 
and witnessed to by the belief of the Church 
in all ages, will be the course of events which 
will immediately precede the morning of the 
Resurrection, the great and terrible day of 
final doom. 

Of the circumstances of that day, of its 
effect on quick and dead, of the pomp and 
power of the descending Judge, it will be my 
business to speak hereafter. 

Meanwhile let us bless His Holy Name 
for the mercy He has shewn to those whom 
He has already called to their everlasting 
rest, and taken from the evil to come, and 



ALL TIME. 107 

spared from a participation in the throes and 
agonies of the last fearful hours of this evil 
world's dark, miserable life : and for ourselves, 
seeing as we must the breathless rapidity 
with which the course of events are speeding 
on, and not knowing amid what tremendous 
scenes our future lot may be cast, let us pray 
Him to have pity on us, for His dear Son's 
sake not to try us beyond our strength ; but 
to fill us with the graces of stedfastness and 
watchfulness, and patience, and not to suffer 
us, amid any trials of life, or pains of death, 
to fall from Him. 



LECTURE VII. 

THE PROPER LESSON CONTINUED. 

W)t trtis of all tint*, ^art BE. 

1 CORINTHIANS XV. 51, 52. 

" Behold, I shew you a mystery ; we shall not all 

SLEEP, BUT WE SHALL ALL BE CHANGED, IN A MOMENT, 
IN THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE, AT THE LAST TRUMP: 
EOR THE TRUMPET SHALL SOUND, AND THE DEAD SHALL 
BE RAISED INCORRUPTIBLE, AND WE SHALL BE CHANGED." 

" As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be 
also in the days of the Son of Man. They 
did eat, they drank, they married wives, they 
were given in marriage, until the day that 
Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, 
and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it 
was in the days of Lot ; they did eat, they 
drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, 
they builded; but the same day that Lot 



110 THE END OF 

went out of Sodom it rained fire and brim- 
stone from heaven, and destroyed them all. 
Even thus shall it be in the day when the 
Son of Man is revealed." 

So the Son of Man Himself forewarned 
His country men, and so in the first fulfil- 
ment of His prediction, by the destruction of 
Jerusalem, it came to pass. In spite of the 
accumulating evidences of impending judg- 
ment manifested in the sky above them and 
the earth around them, the Jewish people 
could not, because they would not, believe 
that their house should be left unto them 
desolate, and that Jerusalem should be trod- 
den under foot by the Gentiles. 

And so, we doubt not, it will be when the 
prophecy has its last and fullest completion. 
The world in general will be taken by sur- 
prise. In spite of wars, and earthquakes, 
and famines, and pestilences, and fearful 
sights, and great signs from heaven ; in spite 
of the rise of Antichrist, and the tremendous 
universal contest between good and evil, and 
the intensity of that time of trouble, men 
will go on as they did before the flood, as 
they did in Sodom, and Babylon, and Jeru- 



ALL TIME. Ill 

salem; they will see nothing which they do not 
choose to see, they will hear nothing which 
they do not wish to hear. The natural phi- 
losopher will have his speculations on the 
earthquakes and the pestilences ; the politi- 
cian will talk fluently about the wars, and 
the religious dissensions, and the revolutions 
of society. They will be so intent upon second 
causes that they will fail to recognize the Fin- 
ger of God. Some will scoff, and others will 
argue that in spite of what they see around 
them, all things continue as they were from 
the beginning of creation. All will be 
blinded, or unbelieving, or reckless, all, save 
the faithful few who have been watching for 
their Lord, doing His work, bearing His 
cross, fighting His battles. These, indeed, 
will have read aright the "fig-tree signs," 
and will be looking up, and lifting up their 
heads, as knowing that their redemption 
draweth nigh. But the rest will have no 
thought of these things, and will be slumber- 
ing, with oil-less lamps and loins ungirded, 
till the very moment in which the wakeful 
Church shall hear the long-expected sum- 
mons, " Behold the bridegroom cometh !" 



112 THE END OF 

And then in proportion to the world's past 
apathy and unbelief, shall be its present ter- 
ror and despair. 

Oh how vain is every effort by which we 
attempt to realize to ourselves a notion of the 
tremendous scene ! "As a snare," *' as a thief 
in the night" will that hour come: and to 
one-half the world this latter prediction must 
be literally accomplished. If half the globe 
be occupied in their daily tasks, the other 
half will be wrapped in sleep, and be startled 
from their slumbers by a sound which, ere 
long, shall wake the very dead. 

From far off, it may be, and ere yet the 
Judge has reached the confines of the world, 
the progress of His angel host will be heard, 
and their glad exulting voices proclaiming, 
that the tyranny of sin and death is ended, 
and the trumpet-blasts with which they 
herald the advance of Him Who is the King 
of Kings, and Lord of Lords. " For," saith 
the Apostle, " the Lord Himself shall descend 
from heaven with a shout, with the voice of 
the archangel, and with the trump of God." 

And still those sounds draw nearer; grow 
clearer and more distinct; the voice of the 



ALL TIME. 113 

trumpet waxing louder and louder, the shout 
of the heavenly train more thrilling and ter- 
rible, till, amid the deep breathless silence of 
a world paralysed with fear, the rustling of 
their million million wings is heard, and the 
bright glancing of seraphic forms is seen, and 
" the sign of the Son of Man/' that is, as 
many of the Fathers have believed, the 
Cross, 1 ei shall appear in heaven." 

" And then shall the tribes of the earth 
mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man 
coming in the clouds of heaven with power 
and great glory ;" yea, they shall see the 
" great white throne, and Him that sits 
thereon," from Whose Face heaven and earth 
shall flee away. 

"And He shall send His angels with a 

1 Bishop Jeremy Taylor, speaking on this point, says : — 
" Remalcus de Vaux (in Harpocrate divino), affirms, that all the 
Greek and Latin fathers, " consentientibus animis asseverant, 
hoe signo crucem Christi significari," do unanimously affirm, 
that the representment of the Cross is the sign of the Son of 
Man spoken of, Matt. xxiv. 50 ... . The sign of that Cross is the 
sign of the Son of Man, when the Lord shall come to judg- 
ment : and from those words of Scripture, "they shall look on 
Him Whom they have pierced," it hath been freely enter- 
tained, that at the day of judgment Christ shall signify His 
Person by something that related to His Passion, His Cross, or 
His Wounds, or both." — Sermon on Doomsday-Book. Works. 
Vol. v. p. 12. 

L 2 



114 THE END OF 

great sound of a trumpet, and they shall 
gather together His elect from the four winds, 
from one end of heaven to the other." 

From North to South, from East to West, 
from one end of the earth to the other, the 
summons shall go forth. And not the living 
only, but they that are in their graves shall 
hear the voice of the Son of God. They 
shall hear it, for that sound from the height 
of heaven shall penetrate to the depths of 
hell, — shall enter the confines of that unseen 
world wherein the spirits of them that de- 
part hence in the Lord are in joy and feli- 
city, — shall rouse from dark forebodings to 
keen despair the souls of those who have 
consorted with Judas and denied their Lord ; 
and by the same token both shall find them- 
selves, with the swiftness of thought, trans- 
ported back to the bodies which once they 
inhabited, and which now, instinct with life 
and motion, are struggling to free themselves 
from the power of that grave which is no 
longer able to retain its prey. 

At once, by one exercise of the Divine 
Will, and in the last instant of departing 
time, the entire mass and multitude of human 



ALL TIME. 115 

beings that have died shall come back to life 
and consciousness. Every spirit that has 
been disembodied, from the hour when Abel 
ceased to breathe, to that in which the last 
of the offspring of Adam yielded up the 
ghost, shall be restored to its fleshly tenement. 
In the same body in which it died, in that 
shall it rise again. All that sleep in the 
dust shall awake and come forth. Not one 
shall be missing, not one shall be forgotten, 
not one shall be able to hide himself. From 
the infant which faintly gave a single gasp and 
died, to the aged patriarch, over whose head, 
in times before the flood, ten weary centuries 
had well nigh rolled, young or old, rich or 
poor, not one but shall feel the influence of 
that waking hour. Those who were sepa- 
rated from each other by scores, it may be, 
of intervening generations shall now be 
brought together at once. Those whose 
graves a distance of half the world divided 
shall now be brought as near to each other 
as they whose coffins rested side by side. 
Then, not only every graveyard in every 
Christian land, not only every foot of conse- 
crated ground shall be teeming with the re- 



116 THE END OF 

viving dead, but every place in which a child 
of Adam hath found his sepulchre, — the 
sandy desert, or the deep morass, — the fruitful 
valley, or the craggy precipice, — the thronged 
city, or the pathless forest, — the lone dun- 
geon, or the tempestuous, insatiable, un- 
fathomable sea, — all shall give back their 
dead, till all the myriads of the world's 
generations, all people, and nations, and kin- 
dred, and tongues, shall be crowded together 
in one living, trembling mass ; every eye 
turned on One Object, every ear thrilling 
with that trumpet-blast. 

But " the dead in Christ shall rise first :" — 
""every man in his own order: Christ the 
first fruits : afterward they that are Christ's 
at His coming." No longings for delay 
with them, no efforts to escape the inevitable 
hour, no crouching to conceal themselves 
within their opening graves, no crying on 
the rocks to cover them, and the hills to fall 
on them, and hide them from the face of Him 
that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath 
of the Lamb. Their's will be glad alacrity, 
and joyful confidence, and assured hope, 
which have been fostered among the green 



ALL TIME, 117 

pastures of Paradise, and which the Witness 
within encourages, as It fills them with 
the trembling eagerness of fruition, and an- 
ticipates their blissful sentence. 

Nor is the season of expectancy long de- 
layed ; for already that mystery revealed by 
the Apostle has been accomplished, — " we 
shall not all sleep, but we shall all he 
changed'' 

The last trump has sounded, and then, 
44 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," 
the change, inconceivable and eternal, has 
been effected. " The dead have been raised 
incorruptible;" the quick have put off mor- 
tality. " Flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
kingdom of God; neither doth corrruption 
inherit incorruption." " This corruptible must 
put on incorruption, and this mortal must 
put on immortality. So when this corrup- 
tible shall have put on incorruption, and this 
mortal shall have put on immortality, then 
shall be brought to pass the saying that is 
written, Death is swallowed up in victory." 

Yea, the victory shall be indeed complete 
over Sin, and Satan, and Death, and Hell ; 
for all the Saints who were alive, and re- 



118 THE END OF 

mained until the coming of the Lord, shall, 
upon the mighty change passing over them, 
be caught up into the clouds, and, together 
with them, the faithful dead, changed like- 
wise, shall be borne heavenwards to join the 
coming host, and to meet the Lord in the 
air. 

O blessed, blessed hour, in which the 
buoyant wings of the dove shall be given to 
the redeemed, and in which they shall mount 
on their glittering pinions to mingle with 
the white-robed crowd of angels ! And 
horror of all horrors to those unhappy beings 
who feel that no ascending power is given to 
them, that they cannot rise into the clouds, 
that a lead-like burden of unrepented sin 
holds them back to earth, and drags them 
downwards, that their feet are pressing a 
burning soil ; who turn every way for refuge, 
and find it nowhere; who see the heavens 
rolling away like a shrivelled, parched scroll, 
with the noise of ten thousand thunders, and 
the glare of a firmament in flames ; who be- 
hold the elements melting with fervent heat, — 
the earth liquefying, — the seas evaporating, — 
the very air becoming inflammable, and 



ALL TIME. 119 

adding intensity to the roaring hurricane of 
fire ; who stand in the midst of all this un- 
consumed, because raised with bodies no 
more corruptible, and gaze upon the earth, 
and all the works that are therein burning 
up, and know by that sure token that all 
their past forebodings are about to be realized, 
and that for them there is no prospect but 
that of a worm that never dieth, and fires 
that never shall be quenched — "none to 
help, none to defend, none to deliver." 

Then shall the dead, small and great, 
stand before God ; and the books shall be 
opened ; and another book shall be opened, 
which is the book of life : and the dead shall 
be judged out of those things which are 
written in the books, according to their 
works. And whosoever is not found written 
in the book of life will be cast into the lake 
of fire. 

And there shall be a new heaven and a new 
earth : for the first heaven and the first earth 
shall have passed away ; and there shall be 
no more sea. And the holy city, New Jeru- 
salem, shall come down from God out of 
heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her 



120 THE END OF 

husband. And the tabernacle of God shall 
be with men, and He will dwell with them, 
and they shall be His people, and God Him- 
self shall be with them, and be their God. 
And God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes ; and there shall be no more death, 
neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there 
be any more pain ; for the former things 
shall have passed away. 

Such is the account which Scripture gives 
us of the end of all time, of the resurrection 
of the dead, and the life of the world to 
come; and the subjects of meditation sug- 
gested by it are as innumerable as they are 
overwhelming. But I must confine myself 
to one more immediately connected with the 
text: "We shall all be changed, in a mo- 
ment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last 
trump." 

In our present mortal state, we are born in 
order that we may die : in the resurrection, 
we shall be born in order that we may live. 
Now we bear about us a body of corruption, 
then we shall be raised in incorruption. A 
change shall come upon us, some new influence 
of indestructible vitality shall be introduced 



ALL TIME. 121 

into our system, which, whether for weal or 
woe, shall render us immortal, — shall so 
strengthen and invigorate us as to enable us 
to see God and live, to stand beside His foot- 
stool, and gaze upon His throne, and yet sur- 
vive admission into the presence of His 
Majesty; or, on the other hand, shall so 
anneal and temper us, that no corrodings of 
despair within, no intensity of torment with- 
out, no gnawing of the worm, no fury of the 
flame, shall consume us, or destroy us, or 
wear us out, or render us less sensitive to an 
extremity of suffering, at the end of millions 
of ages, than we were in that hour when the 
first stream of scorching agony gushed 
through our veins. 

We shall be eternal. And would God 
that that one notion of eternity, — of our being 
changed into a state which shall be unalter- 
ably the same for ever, and for ever, and 
for ever, could be fully realized to our 
minds ! But alas ! we cannot grasp it. We 
try to seize it, and it flees from us into a dark 
illimitable abyss, and we are forced to stop 
and gasp for breath, and in our bewilderment 
and confusion make no further effort, and so 

M 



122 THE END OF 

it passes away, and is lost. We speak of the 
countless number of the stars of heaven, and 
of the grains of sand on the sea shore, of the 
leaves which are scattered by the winds of 
autumn, of the drops of rain which water and 
make glad the face of the earth. Yet count 
them one by one, and let each as it is enu- 
merated stand for a thousand, or, if you will, 
for a thousand times ten thousand millions 
of years, and when the aggregate of all is 
summed up, the unit which shall have been 
taken from eternity will be infinitely less in 
its amount than the abstraction of one grain 
of sand from the earth's surface, one drop of 
water from the unfathomable sea. 

And in such an eternity, my brethren, you 
and I and all of us are to dwell. We must 
dwell in it, cannot escape from it. We must 
live in heaven or in hell, with God or with 
Satan, for ever. And Christ has died for 
us, — has died to save us from hell, and to 
purchase for us an inheritance in heaven. 
He has risen from the grave, to be the pledge 
of our own resurrection. He has ascended 
up on high to prepare an abode for us among 
the many mansions of His Father's house. 



ALL TIME. 123 

He has poured His Spirit into our hearts to 
warn us continually, that life is short, and 
then comes Death, and then the Judgment, 
and then Eternity. 

To day, then, if ye will will hear His voice 
harden not your hearts. Grace to repent, 
strength to obey ; grace to bewail the past, 
strength to redeem the time that yet remains, 
He still, in His pitiful compassion, will not 
deny you. Seek them and you shall find 
them now. But mark me well. In eternity 
it will be too late ! 



LECTURE VIII. 

THE PROPER LESSON CONTINUED. 

©fcrfetian Stetffastness tf>e Betoarft of Christian ©fotrience. 

1 Corinthians xv. 58. 

"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye sted- 
fast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work 
of the lord, forasmuch as ye know that your 
labour is not in vain in the lord." 

This text, so familiar to us, is the form of 
words in which S. Paul winds up his argu- 
ment on the subject of the Resurrection of the 
dead. 

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, — by the 
merits of His Atonement on the Cross, — and 
by the power of His glorious Resurrection, — 
Grod our Heavenly Father hath granted to us 
miserable sinners that which by nature we 

m2 



126 CHRISTIAN STEDFAST1SESS THE 

could not have, a victory over sin, death, and 
the grave. And, therefore, the Apostle 
teaches us, since we have an abundant evi- 
dence that no exertion on our part to serve 
and please God shall, for Christ's sake, 
miss of its reward, it behoves us to maintain 
our stedfastness under all trials ; to continue 
unmoveable amid the seductions of the world, 
the temptations of Satan, the allurements of 
the appetites ; and to abound always in every 
good word and work. 

Thus in this, as in all other instances, S. 
Paul couples the enunciation of a doctrine 
with a statement of the duties which result 
from its acceptance ; while he teaches us 
what to believe, he shews us wherein that 
belief must influence our actions ; and how 
intimate is the connection between faith and 
practice among all who are sincere and 
earnest-minded followers of Christ our Sa- 
viour. 

Of the value of such an exhortation to 
constancy and stedfastness in their Christian 
profession, to those to whom S. Paul wrote, 
no one can doubt who remembers that the 
Cross of Christ was to the Jews a stumbling- 



REWARD OF CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE. 127 

block, and to the Greeks foolishness; and 
that as soon as they began to perceive that 
Christianity was a real thing, with an energy 
and life of its own, both Jew and Gentile 
felt that unless they could crush it, it would 
uproot and exterminate their favourite and 
long-adopted opinions. Accordingly, they 
speedily set themselves to the task of banish- 
ing the very name of Christian from the 
earth. The Gospel was everywhere spoken 
against, and they who preached it or embraced 
it, were treated as the promulgators of a ne- 
farious superstition, who had outraged the 
laws of society, and who had put themselves 
beyond its pale. 

The Lord had not long ascended up on 
high before His followers experienced, col- 
lectively and separately, the fulfilment of that 
warning which He had spoken while yet 
with them, " The time cometh, that whoso- 
ever killeth you will think that he doeth 
God service." Accordingly, they who were 
called on to enter the Gospel-fold were 
solemnly warned to count the cost of what 
they were doing, and plainly shewn what 
they must expect. " All that will live godly in 



128 CHRISTIAN STEDFASTNESS THE 

Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." — " We 
must through much tribulation enter into the 
kingdom of God." — "Let no man be moved 
by these afflictions, for .... we are appointed 
thereunto." And S. Paul, in the very chap- 
ter from which the text is taken, declares 
that he stood in jeopardy " every hour;" else- 
where he gives a lengthened catalogue of the 
scourgings, the stonings, the imprisonments, 
the deaths to which he (who himself had 
been one of its fiercest persecutors) had been 
exposed for the Gospel's sake; and he ad- 
duces, as one of his strongest arguments of 
the sincerity of those who bore witness to 
the resurrection of Jesus, and therein to the 
general doctrine of the Resurrection of the 
Dead, "If in this life only we have hope in 
Christ, we are of all men most miserable." 

For that hope's sake, in all human proba- 
bility, they who became Christians would be 
called on to resign all that in this world men 
most value, all which tends most to alleviate 
its cares and sorrows. Bank and station, 
power and wealth, name and fame, all must 
they prepare to surrender when they em- 
braced the religion of the Cross. But this 



REWARD OF CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE. 129 

was not all, — though, doubtless, it was much 
to many who had to make the struggle be- 
tween duty and inclination of retaining or 
resigning. It was not all, for there are 
harder things to part with than these. It is 
hard to endure when those of a man's house- 
hold become his foes, when those whom most 
he loves look coldly on him, when love is 
changed to suspicion, and friendship fails, 
and trust and confidence are withdrawn. It 
is hard to see the affection of years fading 
away like the morning mist ; hard to have 
words misquoted, actions misrepresented, and 
bad constructions put upon good motives. It 
is hard to bear the pelting storm of party- 
persecution ; to be ridiculed by the worldly- 
minded ; to be thrust on one side by the 
hypocritical and the base ; and to sit down 
and bear all patiently, when a few words 
spoken would open a way of escape, when a 
little yielding to popular clamour, a little 
truckling to the temper of the times, would 
make all easy. 

Now this was the trial to which every 
Christian in the Apostolic age, and for long 
after, was exposed ; and to many minds, this 



130 CHRISTIAN STEDFASTNESS THE 

daily, hourly temptation to sacrifice consis- 
tency, was in all probability a sorer trial 
than even bonds and imprisonment. There 
was, however, but one way through it ; and 
what that way was S. Paul teaches us in the 
text, ei My beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, 
unmoveable, always abounding in the work 
of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your 
labour is not in vain in the Lord." 

No smooth or easy way this. Knowing as 
we do the weakness and manifold infirmity 
of our mortal nature, how blinded by preju- 
dice, how swayed by self-interest and the 
love of ease, how apt, even where the course 
of duty seems plainest and least difficult, to 
hesitate, and be undecided, and to waver 
" like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind - 
and tossed," we feel how hard, how almost 
impossible, it would be to fulfil the injunction 
of the Apostle, and to arrive at a stedfastness 
not Only unmoved, but unmoveable, and to be 
always, — not now and then, not occasionally, 
and as it falls in with our humour, but every 
day and all day, to be unceasingly and un- 
weariedly, — " abounding in the work of the 
Lord," not doing it grudgingly or of necessity, 



REWARD OF CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCK. 131 

but abounding in it, finding our joy and 
highest solace in doing it, — doing it willing- 
ly, eagerly, with all our heart, and all our 
soul, with all our mind, and all our strength. 

It was no easy matter to fulfil such an in- 
junction as this. But where is the command 
of Scripture to be found which is easy for 
the natural man to obey % Is it not invari- 
ably the case that the standard there set forth 
is the very highest which can be conceived % 
and are we not taught to aim at nothing 
beneath if? "Be ye perfect," said our 
Blessed Lord, "even as your Father which 
is in heaven is perfect." 

We are forbidden to be satisfied till we 
have attained that standard, and never to 
give up the attempt in despair, even though 
when we had attained it we should be no- 
thing but unprofitable servants, who had done 
no more than they were bound to do. We 
are never taught, indeed, that we shall at- 
tain perfection, yet we are to labour after it 
continually. We are never promised that 
we shall arive at stedfastness, so fixed and 
enduring as that we shall stand immoveable 
amid the surge of evil, like that well-built 



132 CHRISTIAN STEDFASTNESS THE 

house -which the wise man erected on the 
rock, upon which the rain descended, and 
the floods came, and the winds blew, and 
beat upon that house ; and it fell not, for it 
was founded upon a rock ; but, for all that, 
we are to be perpetually striving to establish 
ourselves with such fixedness of principles 
and strength of resolution as shall, by God's 
grace, enable us to withstand in the evil day, 
and having done all, to stand. 

But now, — which is the point to which I 
would lead your thoughts, — how is it that we 
are to arrive at the frame and temper of mind 
which will incline us to aim after these ex- 
cellent things which by nature we certainly 
cannot have 1 Does Holy Scripture bid us 
become stedfast, and unmoveable, does it 
enjoin us to be perfect, and leave us without 
instructions as to what plan we must pursue 
in order to become so ? Far otherwise. In- 
deed nothing can be more remarkable than 
the way in which it invariably teaches us 
that as with respect to acquiring a know- 
ledge of God's will, the rule is, " Do, and 
you shall know," — that insight into the 
works and ways of God shall be the reward 



REWARD OF CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE. 133 

of obedience, so the highest Christian graces 
are to be developed and perfected by the 
quiet discharge of daily duties. It is one 
of the fulfilments of the promise, " He that 
humbleth himself shall be exalted," that 
they who in an humble, unpretending way, 
without noisy professions or fluent talk about 
themselves, occupy themselves daily and 
duly in discharging carefully and devoutly 
the duties of e very-day life, do gradually, 
and, as it were, unconsciously, arrive at those 
higher degrees of spiritual-mindedness, which 
others who are disposed to exalt themselves 
never reach. Thus lofty aims and lowly 
duties go hand in hand, and without the 
latter the former are mere empty and worth- 
less things, of no more value than the sound- 
ing brass, or the tinkling cymbal. 

And, therefore, as I have already said, the 
Word of God continually points out to us 
that the way to the highest graces lies 
through the course of humble, exact, and, 
what some would call, plodding obedience in 
the discharge of practical duties. When our 
Blessed Lord laid down as the rule of life for 
His followers, "Be ye perfect, even as your 

N 



134 CHRISTIAN STEDFASTNESS THE 

Father which is in heaven is perfect," He 
immediately went on to lay down rules with 
respect to alms-deeds, and fasts, and prayers, 
about a love of earthly things, about a di- 
vided allegiance between God and mammon, 
about single-mindedness, about over-careful- 
ness, • about thoughts concerning meat and 
drink, and even raiment, which shewed how 
earnestly He desired to establish in men's 
minds the immediate and inseparable con- 
nection betwixt obedience and perfection. 
And so in the passage which we are at pre- 
sent considering, when S. Paul has ex- 
horted the Christians of Corinth, amid all the 
trials and sufferings to which the profession 
of the faith should expose them, to continue 
stedfast, and unmoveable, always abounding 
in the work of the Lord, he at once proceeds 
to dwell on practical details by which such 
stedfastness could be exhibited ; — respect, 
namely, to their appointed teachers, mutual 
forbearance, and brotherly kindness ; — thus 
teaching them that the temper, which should 
enable them to confess their Lord before men. 
was only to be acquired by disciplining their 
hearts to do what they knew to be pleasing 



REWARD OF CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE. 135 

to Him, in the various circumstances under 
which the events of daily life should place 
them. 

We sometimes find persons speaking as 
though, if they gave themselves up to a life 
of religion, all the other business of life must 
be neglected, that they must withdraw them- 
selves from the society of their fellow- Chris- 
tians, and abstain from taking a part in the 
active duties of their several stations; for- 
getting thereby the real nature of their trial, 
which is to live in the world, but not to it : 
to do the business of their calling, but, mean- 
while, to make religion sanctify their busi- 
ness. Again, we often see religious persons 
(at least persons so designated by the world) 
zealous, active, and energetic to the highest 
degree, in the discharge of some self-appointed 
duty, to which it is quite evident that God 
has not called them, and apathetic and indif- 
ferent enough towards the discharge of others 
which have no glare, and glitter, and ex- 
citement about them, though really of first- 
rate importance to the soul's health. 

Such persons would do well to meditate 
upon the text before us, for by it they might 



136 CHRISTIAN STEDFASTNESS THE 

assure themselves of two things ; first, that 
" the work of the Lord," in which we are 
required to abound, is the discharge of the 
duties of each man's proper calling without 
wandering from it, or wavering about it ; and 
secondly, that no man can " abound" in the 
work of the Lord who does not adhere to the 
performance of his social and domestic duties 
with steadiness and regularity, doing all 
things as unto God. 

Errors in religion usually lie upon the side 
of convenience. It is not difficult to be 
affected with religious emotion when the 
mind contemplates the ineffable mercies of 
God, or the inestimable privileges which 
Christ hath, by His precious blood-shedding, 
obtained for us as members of the Holy 
Catholic Church. But it is difficult to go 
on day after day, throughout a life-time, 
paying careful attention to the performance 
of those little things which are done ill or 
well, according as they are donewith or 
without God in our thoughts; it is diffi- 
cult to " learn and labour truly to get our 
own living, and do our duty in that state of 
life to which it may please God to call us." 



REWARD OF CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE. 137 

But a smooth, easy path is not that which 
leads to heaven. And it needs only a time 
of trouble to shew that fervours of religious 
excitement, however sincere, may pass away 
and leave no fruit behind them; while a 
course of steady, willing obedience is a cer- 
tain preparative for enabling a man to act or 
suffer resolutely in God's behalf as the need 
shall arise. " Every man's work," saith the 
Apostle, "shall be made manifest: for the 
day shall declare it." 

And now, to apply all this more immedi- 
ately to ourselves, with reference to those 
great doctrines which are revealed to us in 
the chapter which has been selected for the 
Lesson in the Burial Service. 

When we are overwhelmed by the sor- 
rows of some heavy bereavement, we feel 
ourselves incapacitated and utterly unfit for 
the discharge of daily duties. But in this 
respect there is this difference between rich 
and poor. A poor man, even though his 
heart be breaking, feels that he must exert 
himself, if it be only that he may provide his 
daily bread for himself and his family. He 
cannot shut himself up, and mourn in secret; 



N 



a 



138 CHRISTIAN STEDFASTNESS THE 

he cannot surrender himself to the influence 
of his feelings. Yet if his trial be thereby 
sharpened, he may be sure that, if he receives 
it in a right spirit, it is also thereby shortened. 
The rich man, on the contrary, he, whose 
time is at his own disposal, who has leisure, 
and servants to wait on him, and who has 
but to wish for privacy in order to insure it, 
may give himself up to sorrow, and may 
persuade himself that since God has sent it 
him, it would be wrong and sinful to go 
about as usual, that it would be as though 
he turned a deaf ear to the warnings of the 
Almighty. Now the end of this often is, that 
by pursuing such a course he will lose every 
point of good which he might have received 
from the visitation. 

I do not mean that when some dear friend 
or kinsman is taken from us we are to harden 
ourselves as worldly, stubborn-minded per- 
sons sometimes do, to shed no tears, make no 
mourning for the dead, and go on as though 
nothing afflicting had happened to us : this 
would be to frustrate our merciful Father's in- 
tentions in another way. Sorrows are sent us 
in order that we should feel them and grow 



REWARD OF CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE. 139 

the better for them. The question therefore, 
for our consideration is, in what manner we 
can most profit by them. The highest aim 
of a Christian is clearly this, to become sted- 
fast, unmoveable, always abounding in the 
work of the lord, as knowing that his labour 
shall not be in vain, and that in proportion 
as he endeavours to help himself, God will 
help him. 

But his Bible teaches him that in order to 
arrive at anything approaching to such a 
state, he must be diligent in the discharge of 
daily duties. And if in times of sorrow, he 
finds that by yielding too much to his feel- 
ings, by softening himself, by indulging his 
grief, he is unfitting himself for doing those 
things which God expects of him, he will 
resolve, as in all other things so in this, to 
control himself, and to bring his sorrows as 
well as his joys into complete subjection to 
the will of God. In a spirit of lowlinesss 
and devotion he will do the best he can : he 
will exert himself to be calm, and trustful, 
and unmurmuring: he will endeavour to 
comfort others : he will not shrink from feel- 
ing the weight of his cross : he will not 



140 CHRISTIAN STEDFASTNESS. 

struggle under it : but while feeling its 
sharpness will still endeavour to abound 
in the work of the Lord; to do all that 
he can in all ways to please God. And 
so doing he will have his reward. I do 
not say that he will feel his trial less : hut 
he will have more strength given him where- 
with to bear it : he will go " from strength 
to strength :" he will find in the discharge 
of daily duties a counteracting influence to 
impatience nnd morbid repinings: he will 
gain the comfortable experience, that as he 
labours and abounds in the work of the 
Lord, he is not labouring in vain ; that he 
is acquiring a stedfastness and calm trust 
which leads him to count every chastisement 
a blessing, which brings him into closer con- 
tact with the unseen world, weans him from 
this life, and fixes his heart on God ; and, 
finally, that each affliction as it comes yields 
its fruit of righteousness, and gives him a 
larger measure of that peace which the world 
can neither give nor take away. 



LECTURE IX. 

OF THE ANTHEMS TO BE SAID OR SUNG AT THE GRAVE, 

WHILE THE CORPSE IS MADE READY TO BE 

LAID INTO THE EARTH. 

Jtofi ©*mporaI, antr 33*atfi IcUxn&l. 

Job xiv. 1, 2. 
"Man that is born of a woman is of few days, 

AND FULL OF TROUBLE. He COMETH FORTH LIKE A 
FLOWER, AND IS CUT DOWN: HE FLEETH ALSO AS A 
SHADOW, AND CONTINUETH NOT." 

" Having," to use the words of one of the 
most eminent of our Ritualists. " acknow- 
ledged our deceased friend to have lived and 
died in the peace of the Church and com- 
munion of Saints, by bringing his body into 
the place wherein his brethren worship God, 
we now proceed to the grave." 1 The Psalm 

1 Comber's Guide to. the Temple, iv. 430. 



142 DEATH TEMPORAL, 

and Lesson being ended, the funeral train is 
in motion once more, and the corpse is borne 
forth to its final resting-place. 

Few and evil are the days of our pilgrim- 
age, short and quickly traversed are the 
stages of our journey : but this is the shortest 
of all. A few steps, and the faded, way-worn 
form has been carried down the aisle ; a few 
more, and it has reached the grave side. A 
few simple preparations, and the coffin will 
be lowered into the earth ; a brief interval, 
and the last visible evidence that one of our 
fellow-pilgrims has lived and died will be 
removed from our eyes. What an opportu- 
nity is that brief interval for bringing home 
to the heart of each one present his own true 
condition, and for putting in his mouth forms 
of holy prayer in which his heart cannot but 
join. And well and wisely doth the Church 
herein discharge her office. 

" When they come to the grave," says the 
Rubric, " while the corpse is made ready to 
be laid into the earth, the Priest shall say, or 
the Priest and Clerks shall sing," — (for, as 
been already observed, the voice of melody 
has never been deemed an inconsistent or 



AND DEATH ETERNAL. 143 

unsuitable addition to the Office for the 
Dead, — seeing that death to the Christian 
is but a point between two life-times, and 
therefore he cannot sorrow for the departed 
as those who have no hope) : — 

" Man that is born of a woman hath but 
a short time to live, and is full of misery. 
He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; 
he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never con- 
tinueth in one stay." 

First, we are reminded that u man is born 
of a woman ;" and with that thought comes 
the remembrance of the sad scene in which 
the first created woman fell from her state of 
happiness and purity, brought sin, and 
sorrow, and death into the world, and re- 
ceived her portion of the Creator's curse, that 
He would greatly multiply her sorrow, and 
that in sorrow she should bring forth chil- 
dren, who, each in turn, should be partakers 
of an inheritance of wrath, and transmit to 
their descendants a legacy of shame, and 
pain, and dissolution. Yet even in this re- 
membrance there is the comfort of the pro- 
mise of a future Saviour, Who should bruise 
the serpent's head; Who, in taking upon 



144 DEATH TEMPORAL, 

Him to deliver man, should not abhor the 
Virgin's womb ; Who, as Man, born of a 
woman, should overcome the sharpness of 
death, and open the kingdom of heaven to 
all believers. 

Next, we have the sentence of our race 
recited in our ears, while the fulfilment of 
that sentence is brought before our eyes in 
the coffin that stands beside us, and in the 
grave at our feet. "Man that is born of a 
woman hath but a short time to live, and is 
full of misery." Look at the coffin making 
ready for interment ; look beyond it to the 
graves on every side, — graves of friends, 
and neighbours, and kinsmen. Let the his- 
tory of each pass in rapid review before the 
mind's eye, and what will that history tell 
you 1 Some have died young, some old ; on 
some the world has frowned, on some it has 
smiled; some have been prosperous, some 
unfortunate ; they have varied in their con- 
ditions, capacities, tempers, wishes, appe- 
tites ; and yet not more different than their 
respective circumstances have been the va- 
rities of misery which have come upon them ; 
forms and modes of evil, and affliction, from 



AND DEATH ETERNAL. 



145 



within or from without, prepared by their 
own hands, or by those of others, or sent 
direct from God ; — diseases and pains, sor- 
rows and disquietudes, continually changing, 
yet continually recurring, have filled up the 
course of an existence, which, whether it 
has been confined to a score, or protracted 
to fourscore years, has still been charac- 
terized at its close as short. Youth and 
strength have passed away; beauty has 
faded ; riches have made themselves wings ; 
pleasures have palled ; love has grown cold ; 
earthly hope has perished. 4t Vanity of 
vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity." 
All is fleeting, or deceptive, or unsatisfactory ; 
so the generations of old found it; so we 
have found it for ourselves. " Man that is 
born of a woman hath but a short time to 
live, and is full of misery !" 

"He cometh up, and is cut down like a 
flower ; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and 
never continueth in one stay." Many are 
the comparisons by which the sacred writers 
press upon us the truth of the shortness of 
our time in this world. The shadow that 
flits past and then is lost for ever, — the 

o 



146 DEATH TEMPORAL, 

" vapour that appeareth for a little while and 
then vanisheth away," — the post that hasteth 
by, — the "swift ships," — "the eagle that 
hasteth to the prey," — the " arrow shot at a 
mark," — and a hundred similar illustrations 
will occur to your minds as having been 
made the types of the period of man's con- 
tinuance on earth, But of all such compa- 
risons, that seems to have been the favourite, 
which, as it w ? ere, links his fate with the 
flowers of the field. " The days of man," 
saith holy David, " are but as grass, for he 
flourisheth as a flower of the field. For as 
soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone ; 
and the place thereof shall know it no more." 
They " fade away suddenly like the grass," 
saith Moses, the man of God, in his prayer, 
" In the morning it is green and groweth up : 
but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, 
and withered." " All flesh is grass," writes 
the son of Amoz, "and all the goodliness 
thereof is as the flower of the field. The 
grass withereth, the flower fadeth : because 
the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it : surely 
the people is grass." And so, an ancient 
Bishop of our own Church, in language 



AND DEATH ETERNAL. 147 

which breathes the very spirit of revelation, 
while contrasting the change between life 
and death, thus speaks : * So have I seen a 
rose newly springing from the clefts of its 
hood, and at first it was fair as the morning, 
and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's 
fleece. But when a ruder breath had forced 
open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its 
too youthful and unripe retirements, it be- 
gan to put on darkness, and to decline to 
softness, and the symptoms of a sickly age ; 
it bowed the head, and broke its stalk, and at 
night, having lost some of its leaves, and all 
its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds, 
and outworn faces." And thus it is with 
every man. "He cometh up, and is cut 
down like a flower ; he fleeth as it were a 
shadow, and never continueth in one stay." 

This is a truth admitted on all hands ; but 
it is one thing to admit a truth, and another 
to profit by it : and therefore the Church, 
having taught us to confess the uncertainty 
of the tenure by which we hold our exis- 
tence, leads us onward with protecting hand, 
and suggests to us a question which, while it 
answers itself, tends likewise to impress upon 



148 DEATH TEMPORAL, 

us the duties resulting from our knowledge 
that in very truth " our days on the earth 
are as a shadow, and there is none abiding." 

" In the midst of life we are in death : of 
whom may we seek for succour, but of Thee, 
O Lord, Who for our sins art justly dis- 
pleased]" 

Thus, it is not merely that our time is 
short at longest, but even that brief span is 
liable to be cut shorter still. There is no 
exemption from death at any period. We 
may never boast of to-morrow, for none can 
tell what to-morrow may bring forth. When 
we are strongest, and healthiest, and feel 
securest, "there is but a step between us 
and death." It is precisely in the hour in 
which we do not expect Him, that the Lord 
doth come. When men have put the evil 
day far from them, when they have said unto 
their souls, " Soul, thou hast much goods laid 
up for many years, take thine ease, eat, 
drink, and be merry," then it ofttimes is, that, 
without further note or warning, their souls 
are suddenly required of them. " Death 
meets us everywhere, and is procured by 
every instrument, and in all chances, and 



AND DEATH ETERNAL. 149 

enters in at many doors. There is no state, 
no accident, no circumstance of our life, but 
it hath been soured by some sad instance of 
a dying friend/' 1 — " In the midst of life we 
are in death:" "we stand in jeopardy every 
hour." 

Whether, then, we live or die we have 
need of some aid and strength beyond our 
own to succour us continually : if we live, we 
need that succour to protect us with provi- 
dential care from ten thousand perils of 
death, which, known or unknown, daily 
crowd our path : if we die, we need it in 
order that we may be enabled to flee from 
the wrath to come. But there is only one 
source whence such succour can be looked 
for, and we have done all that in us lies to 
place a barrier between ourselves and that 
needful aid. "Lord, to whom shall we go] 
Thou hast the words of eternal life'?" must 
be the first feeling of every heart that 
knows its own weakness and God's strength, 
and yet it is precisely such a heart that will 
be most painfully aware it has a something 
within which checks its progress Godward. 

1 Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying. 

o2 



150 DEATH TEMPORAL, 

That something is the guilt of sin, and in 
proportion as he who has the guilt of sin 
upon his soul feels himself to be approach- 
ing the confines of the unseen world, and to 
be about to appear in the presence of his of- 
fended Maker, will he be bowed down by a 
sense of the awfulness of his condition, and 
his utter inability in himself to find a plea 
wherewith to turn aside the just anger of 
God. He knows his own danger ; he knows 
that his only security is in the Providence of 
the Almighty that Providence by Which the 
very hairs of his head are numbered, and with- 
out Which not a sparrow falls to the ground, 
and yet on what pretence can he dare to ask 
for and invoke the protection of that Provid- 
ence \ " In the midst of life we are in death, 
of whom may we seek for succour, but of 
Thee, O Lord, Who for our sins art justly 
displeased V 

There is but One Name which hath effi- 
cacy before the Throne of Grace, the Name 
of Him Who by His precious blood-shed- 
ding hath purchased to Himself a right to be 
a Mediator between God and Man, — the man 
Christ Jesus. Yet when we measure what 



AND DEATH ETERNAL. 151 

we are, with what God requires us to be, — 
when we consider what are the obligations 
of our baptismal vows, and how we have 
kept them, — when we reflect on all the mer- 
cies and privileges we have had from our 
youth up, and how we have used them, — 
when we think of all the means of grace 
which have been placed within our reach, 
and which we have neglected, — of the hopes 
of glory which have been vouchsafed to us, 
and which we have scorned, — we must 
feel ourselves such wretched, degraded, ab- 
ject, worthless, miserable sinners, as that we 
can scarce venture to plead that Saviour's 
merits on behalf of ourselves. 

Not without reason, then, does the 
Church, in this part of the funeral service, 
when the dead are about to be buried out of 
our sight, and the thought forces itself upon 
us, that the graves are ready for ourselves, 
teach us to offer up both an humble confes- 
sion of sin, and an earnest deprecation of 
God's wrath. We own our misery and 
guilt, and acknowledge that our sole hope of 
pardon and peace lies in Him Whom we 
have sorely offended. To Him, therefore, we 



152 DEATH TEMPORAL, 

turn, scarce daring to look up, yet believing 
with all our hearts both His willingness and 
ability to save. " Of whom may we seek 
for succour but of Thee, O Lord, Who for 
our sins art justly displeased % Yet O Lord 
God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy 
and. most merciful Saviour, deliver us not 
into the bitter pains of eternal death." 

Mark here the language of true faith, and 
how as we pour out our hearts to God, we go 
from strength to strength, from urgent fear 
to trustful hope. It is in the deep sense of 
our own vileness that we first address Him, 
" O Lord God most Holy" in His sight the 
very angels are not pure, what, then must 
we be, how loathsome and leprous, and ut- 
terly corrupted % And yet holy as He is, His 
power is as great as His holiness. He can 
give sight to the blind. He can cleanse the 
leper. He can raise the dead. He can even 
have mercy upon us. " O Lord most mighty." 
" Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst me make 
clean." And then comes in the blessed 
thought that He Whom we thus address is 
pledged by the most gracious of His titles 
to do all that He can for us. " O holy and 



AND DEATH KTERNAL. 153 

most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the 
bitter pains of eternal death." Thus when 
our hearts are disquieted within us, and the 
fear of death is fallen upon us ; when fearful- 
ness and trembling are come upon us, and 
an horrible dread hath overwhelmed us, 
doth the Church teach us with the Psalmist 
out of the very depths to cry, " But my hope 
hath been in Thee. I have said, Thou art 
my God." And if only in His power and 
mercy, He Who by His " one sacrifice for 
sins," hath purchased redemption for us, will 
save us from the bitter pains of eternal 
death, death temporal may well be borne. 
It is, as a holy Martyr of our own once said, 
" a mere shadow of death, a little darkness 
upon nature," and supported by His aid 
Who endured the Cross for us, it may be pa- 
tiently and cheerfully submitted to, however 
sudden may be its summons. 

But without such support, the valley of 
the shadow of death would be indeed a fear- 
ful passage for any son of Adam to cross 
alone. Without His rod and staff to com- 
fort us, all would be darkness and despair. 
How could we hope to escape the thronging 



154 DEATH TEMPORAL, 

hosts of Satan, then more than ever actively 
bestirring themselves against us % How, 
amid agonies of pain, and fear, and bewilder- 
ment, a tortured body, failing senses, and a 
perturbed mind, could we expect to maintain 
our stedfastness of faith unto the end 1 Hence 
it is that the Church puts one more prayer 
into our mouths, " Thou knowest, Lord, the 
secrets of our hearts; shut not Thy merciful 
ears to our prayer ; but spare us, Lord most 
holy, O God most mighty, O holy and mer- 
ciful Saviour, Thou most worthy Judge Eter- 
nal, suffer us not at our last hour for any 
pains of death to fall from Thee'' Thus we 
address ourselves to Him Who is at once our 
Saviour and our Judge ; Who compassionateth 
sinners, while He hateth and abhorreth sin ; 
Who knows our hearts, their foulness, their 
hidden springs of corruption, their most se- 
cret and unsuspected enormities ; Who 
knows us thoroughly, yet " loves us better 
than He knows ;" Who is a most pure and 
holy God, repaying them that hate Him to 
their face, yet at the same time a most mer- 
ciful High Priest, Who is touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities, having been in all 



AND DEATH ETERNAL. 155 

points tempted like as we are ; yea, One 
Who tasted of death under circumstances 
more terrible and appalling than tongue can 
tell, or heart conceive, and Who in that tre- 
mendous hour had such a sense of derelic- 
tion and abandonment as compelled Him to 
utter a cry which none of us (Blessed be His 
Name !) who serve Him faithfully can ever 
utter, " My God, My God, why hast Thou 
forsaken me ?" 

And what is the prayer which we proceed 
to make of Him ? It is this, that in spite of 
all our infirmities and transgressions, He 
would spare us, and not suffer us, at our last 
hour, for any pains of death to fall from Him. 
O awful prayer 1 awful from its necessity, 
yet salutary in its awfulness, since it re- 
minds us that so long as we continue in this 
world, we are never safe from the possibility 
of falling away ; that so weak are we, and 
frail, that there is even danger that extremity 
of bodily pain should tempt us at the very mo- 
ment when deliverance is nearest to deny 
Him Who can alone deliver us ; that, left to 
ourselves, we may at the eleventh hour, and 
after having borne the heat and burden of 



T56 DEATH TEMPORAL, 

the day, so act as to become altogether un- 
meet to receive mercy at the last. 

Well may such a reflection cause us not to 
be high-minded, but to fear, to fear continu- 
ally. Do not then put such fear away from 
you. God will never fail you, unless you 
compel Him to do so : but take heed that 
you compel Him not. Learn to die daily. 
Learn somewhat of the pangs of the Cross, 
in the ways of Christian discipline. Keep 
Him, above all things, ever before you, Who 
hung thereon. The nails, the crown of 
thorns, the dislocated limbs, the quivering 
muscles, the parched tongue, the raging 
thirst, the gibes, the mockery, the insults, 
the ignominy, keep them all before you; 
they will arm you against your own hour of 
need. But while you think of them, think 
also that they were your sins which contri- 
buted to add to their bitterness ; that it was 
the weight oiyour transgressions that made 
it needful that the Eternal Son should bear 
the intensity of His Father's wrath against 
a guilty world ; that it is through the merits 
of His atoning blood, and for His sake you 
will be delivered from the bitter pains of 



AND DEATH ETERNAL. 157 

eternal death ; and that He endured an in. 
tensity of agony which constrained Him to 
ejaculate, "My God, My God, why hast 
Thou forsaken Me ?" in order that in your 
last hour He might enable you in words of 
calm and trustful hope to say, " Lord, into 
Thy hands I commend my spirit ; for Thou 
hast redeemed me, O Lord, Thou God of 
Truth." 



LECTURE X. 

THE FORM OF WORDS APPOINTED FOE, THE INTERMENT. 

"lEartf) to mxtf), asl)*s to asljts, trust to trust.'* 

Matthew viii. 22. 
"Let the dead bury their dead." 

I suppose there are few persons on whose 
minds, at some period of their lives, consi- 
deration of the incident of which the words 
just read form a part have not left a startling, 
uncomfortable, and (to speak honestly) pain- 
ful impression. One of the disciples makes 
the request to Jesus that before he forsakes 
all to follow Him, he may be allowed to bury 
his father. " Jesus said unto him, Let the 
dead bury their dead : but go thou and 
preach the kingdom of God." Was it pos- 



160 THE BURIAL OF 

sible that a more proper and natural request 
could be made 1 one savouring less of indif- 
ference or unwillingness % one that testified 
more strongly that he who made it was anxi- 
ous to obey that ' ' first commandment with 
promise" that he should honour his father 
and his mother'? 

On the other hand, was it possible to con- 
ceive a refusal more stern, and (as in the 
case of one of ourselves we should consider 
it) more un sympathizing than this reply of 
our adorable Redeemer % 

How, then, are we to interpret the trans- 
action] Is the religion of the Cross such, 
that while it promises that ie every one that 
hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, 
or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or 
lands," for Christ's sake and the Gospel's, 
" shall receive an hundred-fold, and shall in- 
herit everlasting life:" it also literally re- 
quires of us that we should steel our hearts 
against natural affection, that we should root 
up and pluck out those sweet associations of 
home, and family, and friends, without which 
this world would be in very truth a dreary 
waste, a wilderness of solitude and tears'? 



THE DEAD. 161 

Are we, when we embrace the Gospel, to 
endeavour to become hard, and callous, 
and insensible'? Could this be the lesson 
inculcated by Him Whose own conduct to 
His Blessed Virgin Mother was through- 
out His life so eminent an example of filial 
affection and tenderness, and Who, while 
hanging upon the cross, forgot for awhile His 
own agonies in order to commend her to the 
peculiar care of the beloved disciple % Surely 
such questions answer themselves. 

Are we, then, on the other hand, to infer 
that the Lord desired to inculcate upon His 
followers that the rites of sepulture were 
needless, and, therefore, to be dispensed with 
for the time to come \ 

To this it may be sufficient to reply, that 
of the three persons whom our Lord raised 
from the dead, one was actually buried, and 
another being borne to his grave when the 
miracle was performed ; that He commended 
the pious act of her who anointed His body 
with precious ointment, "for in that she 
hath poured this ointment upon Me, she did 
it for My burial ;" that He Himself, when 
removed from the Cross, was consigned by 

p 2 



162 THE BURIAL OF 

faithful hands to the rich man's " own new 
tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock;" 
that it was in reward of the devotion of 
those who had performed this pious act that a 
vision of angels bore the first tidings of the 
resurrection ; and, finally, that it is expressly 
stated that they were " devout men" who 
carried the first Martyr, S. Stephen, to his 
burial. 

Hence we may be sure that our Blessed 
Lord by no means condemned the act in it- 
self, but that there were other considerations 
of higher moment, and which had a still 
higher claim upon the applicant. 

" Was it not, then," asks S. Chrysostom, 
"extreme ingratitude not to be present at 
the burial of a father % If, indeed, he did so 
out of negligence, it was ingratitude, but if 
in order not to interrupt a more needful 
work, his departing would most surely have 
been of extreme inconsideration. For Jesus 
forbade him, not as commanding to think 
lightly of the honour due to our parents, but 
signifying that nothing ought to be to us 
more urgent than the things of heaven, and 
that we ought, with all diligence, to cleave to 



THE DEAD. 163 

these, and not to put them off for ever so lit- 
tle, though our engagements be exceeding in- 
dispensable and pressing. For what can be 
more needful than to bury a father'? what more 
easy % since it would not even consume any 
long time. But if one ought not to spend even 
as much time as is required for a father's 
burial, nor is it safe to be parted even so 
long from our spiritual concerns ; — consider 
what we deserve, who all our time stand off 
from the things which pertain to Christ, and 
prefer things very ordinary to such as are 
needful, and are remiss, when there is no- 
to press on us T' J 

On the whole, then, it appears that the 
admonition of our Blessed Lord, on the occa- 
sion to which we are alluding, was very 
much the same as that which, at a subsequent 
time, He addressed to her, who cumbered 

1 The interpretation of S. Cyril of Alexandria, which is fol- 
lowed by Aquinas, and some of the modern commentators, is, 
that the father of whom the disciple speaks was not yet dead ; 
and consequently his request was to be allowed to go to watch 
over the aged man till he should die, and then bury him. This, 
S. Cyril says, our Blessed Lord did not allow, for there were 
others to do it, and the disciple had received a call to a higher 
duty. The case seems parallel to that of Elisha, 1 Kings xix. 
20. 21. The test of Elisha' s character is, that he should not go 
back as he had at first proposed. 



164 THE BURIAL OF 

herself with much serving and domestic cares 
when she might have " sat at Jesus' feet, and 
heard His word;" "Martha, Martha, thou 
art careful and troubled about many things : 
but one thing is needful: and Mary hath 
chosen that good part, which shall not be 
taken away from her." It is meet that the 
dead should be treated by us with all de- 
cency and reverent affection, but our tender- 
ness must not be allowed to degenerate into 
weakness. As, on the one hand, we are not 
to be sorry as men without hope, so, on the 
other, we are not to permit ourselves to make 
a luxury of grief. Afflictions are not sent to 
harden us, but to soften us ; yet to soften us 
in such a manner as by no means to encou- 
rage self-indulgence. Bereavements are in- 
tended to brace us, even while they quell 
and subdue us ; — to strengthen us, w T hile 
they teach us our weakness ; — to lead us to 
submit ourselves wholly to God, and yet at 
the same time to exert ourselves. 

All sorrow comes from God, and therefore 
no end for which He sends it is to be missed : 
we are allowed to mourn, — required to learn 
the lesson of our own mortality from that of 



THE DEAD. 165 

others ; but, at the same time, our grief is 
not to be made the excuse for postponing the 
discharge of obvious duties, and still less 
must it be pleaded as a reason for withdraw- 
ing ourselves from the attempt to fulfil the 
objects (whatever they may be) for which it 
has pleased His Providence to place us in 
any peculiar field of action. 

No doubt it is because the Church 
would have her children under the con- 
straining influence of such feelings, that she 
has appointed words of such peculiar calm- 
ness and simplicity to be used at the mo- 
ment of interment, and utterly avoids all ex- 
citing and impassioned language at the time 
when those who heard it would most respond 
to it. There is not in the whole range of all 
that has been written by uninspired men a 
passage of such deep and awful solemnity as 
that form which the Church prescribes to be 
read when the body is laid within the grave, 
and yet it breathes nothing but the most chas- 
tened tone throughout. In almost the fewest 
words that could be used it records the sub- 
mission of the Christian mourner, and the 
firm and settled character of his faith. 



166 THE BURIAL OF 

The anthems which we have already con- 
sidered being ended, the Rubric directs that 
while the earth shall be cast upon the body- 
by some standing by, the Priest shall say, 
"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty 
God of His great mercy to take unto Himself 
the soul of our dear brother here departed, 
we therefore commit his body to the ground ; 
earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust ; 
in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection 
to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus 
Christ: Who shall change our vile body, 
that it may be like unto His glorious Body, 
according to the mighty working, whereby 
He is able to subdue all things to Him- 
self." 

You all know the scene which accom- 
panies these words : sad and regretful me- 
mory brings before the mind of each of us 
some one of those occasions on which he has 
borne his part in a funeral train, and when 
intensity of sorrow has, as it were, sharpened 
remembrance, so that every circumstance, 
however minute, has become indelibly 
stamped upon our minds. Imagination pre- 
sents once more the band of weeping mourn- 



THE DEAD. 167 

ers, — how and where they stood, — the dark, 
deep grave, — darker and deeper as it seemed 
from contrast with the clear sky above ; the 
silence, — unbroken hitherto save by the 
voice of the minister, or the music of some 
joyous bird carolling among the trees, — now 
at length disturbed by the descent of the 
body to its final resting-place. Our ears re^ 
call the sound of the coffin grating, as it is 
lowered, against the sides of the grave : we 
see it lying below us, with the feet turned to 
the east, — ready for the warning summons 
of the Archangel's trump, and so consigned 
by immemorial tradition of the Church, in 
order that when vision should once more rec- 
tum to the sightless eyeballs, the awakened 
dead should look towards Him Whose com- 
ing is expected from that quarter of the sky : 
then follows some short pause, and then once 
more the voice of the officiating priest is 
heard, and as he speaks the solemn words of 
interment, and commits earth to earth, 
ashes to ashes, dust to dust, traditionary 
usage adds the most striking incident to the 
scene, and the sharp rattle of a spadefull of 
earth thrice thrown upon the coffin-lid, be- 



168 THE BURIAL OF 

speaks the accomplishment of the primeval 
curse on one more child of Adam : " Dust 
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." 

And yet, as Adam was not ejected from 
Paradise till the promise had been vouchsafed 
him of a future Deliverer, so the Church, in 
the moment of laying her children in the 
grave, and hiding them from the sight of 
the living, makes a solemn declaration of 
her faith, and proclaims that she commits 
the sleeping body to the ground gi in sure 
and certain hope of the resurrection to eter- 
nal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ : 
Who shall change our vile body, that it may 
be like unto His glorious Body, according to 
the mighty working whereby He is able to 
subdue all things to Himself." 

We live in dark and miserable days, 
when faith has grown so cold, that men are 
oftentimes ashamed of confessing what they 
nevertheless believe, and when many, through 
a schismatical or self-willed spirit, are con- 
tinually cavilling at all those parts of re- 
ligion which are above their comprehension, 
and at all those ordinances of the Church 
which have ceased to be in harmony with the 



THE DEAD. 169 

feelings of an age of unbelief. It is a happy 
thing that, under such circumstances, the 
Burial Service of the Church has been so far 
hallowed to them, in spite of themselves, by 
its tender and reverent association with de- 
parted friends, that hitherto they have (in 
great measure, at least) foreborne to defile it 
with the touch of their sacrilegious hands. 
The self-same individuals who are too proud 
or self-willed to join with all the rest of 
Christendom in turning to the east when 
they recite the Creed, are yet not unwilling 
to be buried after the fashion of their fathers ; 
and though maintaining that to make a dis- 
tinction of east, west, north, or south, is but 
to give way to superstition, are yet, by a 
strange inconsistency, content to follow the 
custom of those who, having Christ in their 
hearts when they died, desired so to repose 
as that He should be the first object on 
which their eyes should rest on their rising. 
One point, indeed, there is connected with 
the ceremony of interment at which such 
persons cavil, and, perhaps, as respects 
themselves, with some show of reason. They 
say that, considering how various are the 

Q 



170 THE BURIAL OF 

characters of those over whom the Burial 
Service is read, the officiating clergyman, 
both here and in other parts of the service, is 
called upon to express a feeling with respect 
to the deceased which cannot always be an 
honest one. Knowing (and that from God's 
own Word) that the wicked shall be turned 
into hell, and all the people that forget God, 
how is it possible, say they, to commit the 
remains of a drunkard, a blasphemer, or of 
a covetous or unclean person to the ground, 
with any hope that he rests in Jesus V 

Now to this it may be replied, that to the 
excommunicated the Church refuses Chris* 
tian burial : but of those who are not ex- 
communicated she is allowed to hope that 
they have not become reprobate. 

After all, however, her language is that of 
extreme caution and reserve. She does not 
assume to herself the office of Judge: she 
dares not anticipate the sentence of the judg* 
ment-day, She hopes the best of all ; and, 



1 " We meekly beseech. Thee, O Father, to raise us from 
the death of sin unto the life of righteousness ; that, when we 
shall depart this life, we may rest in Him as our hope is this our 
brother doth.'' See the last of the final prayers.- 



THE DEAD, 171 

therefore, receives all who have professed 
communion with her, and remained in that 
profession to the hour of death, with the same 
greeting : but I repeat^ that all her expressions, 
as to the future condition of the departed, are 
those of extreme caution. She commits the 
body to the ground, indeed, in sure and cer- 
tain hope of the resurrection to eternal life ;* 
but therein she expresses only her faith in a 
doctrine generally , and without necessary 
reference to its bearing on the condition of 
any individual deceased, of whom the most 
she says is, that she hopes that he rests in 
Christ. She knows that there will be a 
resurrection unto death, as well as a resur- 
rection unto life: she knows that of them 
that sleep in the dust of the earth some shall 
awake to shame and everlasting contempt, 
and some to everlasting life; — that some 
will be placed on the left hand of the Judge, 
and some on His right ; — that the goats will 
be parted from the sheep, — the tares from 
the wheat ; but who shall be saved and who 
shall be lost it is not her's to decide, and, 

1 And we must be careful to observe that her expression is 
" the resurrection,'' not " his resurrection." 



172 THE BURIAL OF 

therefore, as has been well said, she would 
fain cherish the belief, " that even where 
the darkest uncertainty may hover appa- 
rently over the future lot of the departed, all 
may be raised to life everlasting, all may 
come to a joyful resurrection for Jesus 
Christ's sake, rather than, even in any such 
instance to take it for granted, and positively 
to presume to pronounce, that the individual 
is excluded from all hope of good." 

But in proportion as the Church is lenient 
in her judgment, ought each of us, as indi- 
viduals, to be strict with ourselves. It were 
vain to hope that all who have called them- 
selves her children will be owned as such 
by the Judge of quick and dead at the last 
day. Gi'eat as our privileges are, our privi- 
leges cannot save us. Nothing but Christ 
can save us, and even He cannot save us 
unless our course be one of obedience or re- 
pentance. For us He hath endured the 
sharpness of His Father's anger, for us He 
hung upon the Cross, for us He endured a 
load of shame, and ignominy, and agony, 
such as is beyond our power to calculate or 
fathom. In His own Self He bare our sins 



THE DEAD. 173 

in His own Body on the tree. He was 
wounded for our transgressions. He was 
bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement 
of our peace was upon Him, and with His 
stripes we are healed. His we have been 
made: His we are: we are bought with a 
price. And yet, despite of all this, there is no 
period of our existence in which we may not 
forfeit all our blessings, frustrate the gracious 
intentions of the Most High towards us, and 
make of none effect, so far as we are con- 
cerned, those ineffable and inestimable suf- 
ferings which the Son of God endured on 
Calvary. It is possible that we may do 
such things, and possible that we may do 
them without being aware of it. Our hearts 
are deceitful : it is not difficult to blind our 
own eyes and those of others : we may per- 
suade ourselves that we are faithful children 
of the Church, and in her outward commu- 
nion we may die. And yet, when all is done, 
we may be found in the number of those for 
whom no place is reserved in heaven, and 
whose mortal bodies, when raised from the 
grave, shall never be made like unto Christ's 
glorious Body, but shall only be endowed 

q 2 



174 THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD. 

with a capacity to live for ever in misery 
never to be mitigated, in tribulation and an- 
guish irremediable, inevitable. 

How fearful, how utterly appalling is this 
reflection ! It is agony to think of it : but 
perdition to forget it. May God have mercy 
upon us, and write it in our hearts. May 
it please Him to fill us with a spirit of holy 
fear, and to give us such comforts as may 
save us from despair. May He, for His 
dear Son's sake, help us to obey Him here, 
and give us peace at last. Amen. 



LECTURE XI. 

ON THE ANTHEM AFTER THE INTERMENT. 

©onsfimattons on tfj* Enternutrtate State. 

Revelations xiv. 13. 

"and i heard a voice from heaven saying unto 
me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the 
Lord from henceforth : Yea, saith the Spirit, that 
they may rest from their labours, and their works 
do follow them." 

The voice and words here recorded form 
part of that most glorious vision of the Apo- 
calypse, wherein it was vouchsafed to the be- 
loved disciple to see the Lamb standing on 
Mount Sion, surrounded with the blessed 
company which follows l Him whithersoever 
He goeth, — the guileless, virgin host, the 
first fruits of the redeemed, who, in white 
robes washed in Blood, with palms of tri- 



176 CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 

umph in their hands, and calm, sweet coun- 
tenances, and eyes from which the vestiges 
of tears have been wiped away for ever, 
stand day and night to minister in the Tem- 
ple of God, and are found without fault be- 
fore His throne. 

These were they of whom S. John had al- 
ready learned that they had " come out of 
great tribulation," and he now recognized in 
them the cause and evidence of their tri- 
umph, — the Father's Name was written on 
their foreheads ; and as the Apostle, wrapped 
in ecstacy, listened to their song — that song 
which no man save themselves could learn, — 
and heard their voices in number number- 
less, yet in unison unbroken, melodious as 
the golden harps whose strings they touched, 
full as the sound of many waters, deep as the 
tone of mighty thunderings, there still were 
presented before his eyes sights which taught 
him to believe that as it was in the begin- 
ning, so should it be even unto the end, that 
tribulation should be the portion of the 
Saints of God, — their trial here, their crown 
hereafter,— that persecution should be ever 
their's, even though eternal vengeance should 



INTERMEDIATE STATE. 177 

follow the persecutors, — that faith should 
triumph most when apostacy was most preva- 
lent, and that the patience and perseverance 
of the children of the Kingdom should be 
perfected by the very methods adopted for 
their destruction. 

These things., I say, were to be implied by 
the visions vouchsafed to the Apostle ; but 
to confirm his faith and patience yet more 
strongly (and in him the faith and patience 
of all true Christian souls), an intimation 
direct, and not to be mistaken, was afforded 
him, that they who maintain their stedfast- 
ness shall not only find an end to their afflic- 
tions in a short time, but that their con- 
stancy in the hour of temptation shall be 
rewarded by an immediate transition to a 
state of rest and peace. " I heard a voice 
from heaven saying unto me, Write, 
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord 
from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that 
they may rest from their labours, and their 
works do follow them." 

Mysterious and inscrutable to us as is 
the prophetic portion of the Apocalyptic vo- 
lume, its doctrine, its consolatory promises, 



178 CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 

and its admonitory warnings, are of that 
plain and simple character, that he who runs 
may read them. Such a passage is that to which 
I am calling your attention ; and because it 
is so, because it contains a most cheering 
and comfortable assurance, the Church Ca- 
tholic generally hath introduced it into some 
part of her Offices for the dead, and the com- 
pilers of our own Prayer Book have so placed 
it as to remind us at the moment when in- 
terment has taken place, and the grave is 
about to be closed, that the body must be 
turned into corruption, the soul is already in 
a state of calm and tranquil happiness. 

The Church, as we have before observed, 
while she refuses Christian burial to those 
whom she has excommunicated, with respect 
to all others who are brought to her for in- 
terment, allows herself to hope that they may 
find acceptance with God. She therefore re- 
minds the assembled mourners of the pro- 
mise made from heaven in behalf of the 
dead which die in the Lord, though with a 
wise caution she does this in a manner which 
has no necessary reference to the case of the 
individual whose body has just been com- 



INTERMEDIATE STATE. 179 

mitted to the ground. And as it seems need- 
ful that she should direct the minds of her 
children to a contemplation of that interme- 
diate state, in which the souls of the departed 
are placed between death and the resurrec- 
tion, she takes, as an appropriate opportunity 
of doing so, the moment between the burial 
of the corpse and the final prayers of the sur- 
vivors. 

When the breath of man goeth forth, and 
his mortal body is about to be turned into 
corruption, — whither, in the moment of sepa- 
ration of soul and body, is his immortal 
spirit borne % a question this of deep and ab- 
sorbing interest, but one which nothing but 
Revelation could answer. 

There have been those who have feigned 
to themselves, I know not what of the sleep 
of the soul; — who have supposed that the 
interval between death and judgment is 
passed in a state of entire unconsciousness, 
torpor, and insensibility. It is strange that 
an opinion which seems but one degree re- 
moved from that which allowed the soul no 
existence at all after death, should have been 
held by any persons calling themselves Chris- 



180 CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 

tians. Such, however, has been the case ? 
and it is only one instance more of the man- 
ner in which persons who are wise and good 
on many points will yield to the temptation 
of explaining away the doctrines of the 
Bible, when those doctrines do not happen to 
coincide with their own preconceived opinions. 
Surely when we consider the promise of our 
Blessed Lord to the dying malefactor, " To 
day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise," in a 
place, that is, wherein the disembodied spirit 
should be conscious of its own happiness and 
the presence of the Redeemer ; when we re- 
member the parable of the Rich Man and 
Lazarus, 1 and reflect upon the mysteries of 
the unseen world there unfolded to us, the 
rich man on his couch of fire, the beggar in 
Abraham's bosom, and their mutual recogni- 
tion of, and conversation with, each other, — 
when we recall the expression of S. Paul's 

1 If it should be objected that the narrative above alluded to 
is only a parable, we reply that whether it be a parable or not, 
our Lord's parables are only drawn from the truth of things, 
and He does not speak fictions or fancies of the unseen world. 
But it is a question whether this is strictly a parable. It is not, 
like other parables, a lesson conveyed by a similitude, but an ex- 
ample, openly warning against the abuse of riches, and shew- 
ing the end of such abuse. 



INTERMEDIATE STATE. 181 

vehement desire to " depart and be with 
Christ," as though the one circumstance di- 
rectly implied the other, — and remember 
further, that he elsewhere speaks of his 
" being at home in the body" as a state in 
which he must needs be " absent from the 
Lord," — when, above all, we consider what 
is involved in that article of the Creeds and 
of our Church that, " as Christ died for us, 
and was buried, so also is it to be believed 
that He went down into Hell," we must 
come to the conclusion that though the 
notices in Holy Scripture with respect to the 
intermediate state are both few in number, 
and scanty in particulars, yet enough is told 
us to make it manifest that unconsciousness 
and insensibility are not the doom of the 
disembodied soul ; but that it passes at once 
into a state in which it experiences some fore- 
taste of the sentence which it shall receive at 
the judgment- day — that it is transferred with 
the penitent thief to Paradise, or is conveyed, 
like Judas, to its own place, some dreary 
abode of darkness and despair. 

And more than this ; the words of the 
text, which would be of themselves abun- 

R 



182 CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 

dantly sufficient to establish the doctrine of 
the consciousness of the soul when received 
into the abode of departed spirits, give us a 
yet further insight into the unseen world, 
and the condition of such of its inhabitants 
as have been true servants of God. "Blessed 
are the dead which die in the Lord : — they 
rest from their labours, and their works do 
follow them." — "The souls" of the righteous 
are in the hand of God, and there shall no 
torment touch them. In the sight of the 
unwise they seemed to die, and their depar- 
ture is taken for misery. And their going 
from us to be utter destruction : but they are 
in peace:" their spirits live with Almighty 
God, and with Him they " are in joy and 
felicity." 

Perfect joy, and perfect felicity as yet, 
indeed, they have not, even though they are 
in some sense present with the Lord, and 
have some beatific proof of their nearness to 
Him, because perfect joy can only be at- 
tained when the ordeal of the judgment-day 
has been passed, and the sentence has gone 
forth for ever, " Well done, thou good and 
faithful servant ; thou hast been faithful over 



INTERMEDIATE STATE. 183 

a few things, I will make thee ruler over 
many things: enter thou into the joy of thy 
Lord." 

Still, though the bliss of Paradise may 
not, and cannot be commensurate with the 
bliss of Heaven (were it only because ex- 
pectancy is not fruition, and the surest and 
most certain hope must come short of the 
satisfaction of possession), the bliss of Para- 
dise is as far above all earthly happiness as 
it is inferior to the felicity of Heaven. And 
the reason of this is, that they who die in 
the Lord (and of such only am I speaking) 
do there rest from their labours, and their 
works do follow them. 

They rest from their labours. — It is the 
law of man's existence in this his state of 
earthly trial that in the sweat of his brow 
he should earn and eat his bread: and, 
whether men be rich or poor, this decree is, 
in its measure, carried out with respect to 
all. If the poor have their wearying, ex- 
hausting, bodily labours, the rich have their 
anxieties and carking cares to prey upon and 
corrode their hearts. Thus high and low, 
one with another, we have all our various 



184 CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 

labours, which sooner or later wear us down, 
and wear us out. But with death, if so be 
we have died in the Lord, comes Paradise ; 
and with Paradise comes rest. We rest 
from our labours. No more daily toil in 
order that we may provide food and clothing 
for ourselves and our families, — no more of 
unceasing exertion day by day, week by 
week, through long cheerless years of diffi- 
culty, — no more struggling with want, no 
more fears of losing what has been hardly 
earned, no more anxious forecastings, no more 
sudden reverses, no more of the changes and 
chances of this mortal life. They will all be 
over, and for ever. Nor only they, but all 
those stern accompaniments of mortality 
which add so much to the sorrows of this 
vale of tears, hunger and thirst, cold and 
nakedness, pain and privation of whatever 
kind, sudden sickness and wasting disease ; 
infirmities, bodily and mental ; weakness, 
sleeplessness, sharp pangs and gnawing pains, 
all will cease, we shall rest from our labours. 
Yes, and better still, there will be no more 
unkindness to wound, nor suspicion to alien- 
ate, no calumnies, no misrepresentations, no 



INTERMEDIATE STATE. 185 

cruel and unjust imputations ; we shall be no 
longer exposed to the machinations of the de- 
signing, or the malevolence of those that hate 
us ; ingratitude will no longer tempt us to 
harden our hearts against our brethren, deceit 
and guile will vex us no more. No ridicule 
will make us afraid of doing our duty, no 
persecution will seduce us to deny our Lord. 
Oppression, selfishness, covetousness, strife, 
party-clamour, will grieve our hearts no more. 
We shall have escaped, even as the bird out 
of the snare of the fowler : the snare is broken 
and we are delivered. " Blessed are the 
dead which die in the Lord, for they rest 
from their labours." 

Nor are these which I have described 
their only labours, nor their only rest. When 
once the gates of Paradise are closed upon 
them, their voices are refrained from weep- 
ing, and their eyes from tears. Death hath 
no more dominion over them, partings and 
bereavements are at end. No more have 
they of watching beside a sick and dying 
bed, no more experience of the fluctuations 
between hope and fear, no more farewells 
to speak with aching hearts, no more strug- 

r2 



186 CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 

gles to attain the spirit of self-resignation, 
no more efforts to wear a calm brow for 
the sake of others, while the heart within 
feels breaking, no more sinking when the 
excitement of misery is over, no more arm- 
ing against weakness in the discharge of 
painful duties, no more following to the 
grave those whom they have loved as life 
itself; nor yet have they to hear the stifled 
sob, or mark the averted head turning away 
lest it should witness their own sufferings. 
All this is over : from this they rest. But 
chiefest, best, and happiest of all, they 
rest from sin, Satan no longer strives to 
overshadow them with his dusky wings ; the 
flesh is no longer able to seduce, nor the 
world to corrupt. The long-continued war- 
fare is accomplished, the weary struggle is 
ended. Fleshly appetites and passions rebel 
no more ; the burden of corruption is thrown 
from off their shoulders ; the natural will no 
longer opposes itself to the will of God ; sin- 
ful desires and propensities harass them no 
longer; negligences and ignorances are no 
longer a source of daily self-reproach and 
humiliation. 



INTERMEDIATE STATE. 187 

O blessed, blessed dead ! blessed are the 
dead which die in the Lord ! this rude, cold, 
heartless world, vexes them no more, and no 
longer buffeted by its storms and tempest, 
they have entered the haven where they 
would be. All there is smooth, and calm, and 
tranquil, and still: the silence of deep, un- 
fathomable eternity, the repose of that unseen 
world which a thick impenetrable veil cuts 
off from the noise and madness of mortality. 
Here is rest, and heavenly contemplation, the 
grateful overwhelming feeling of safety, and 
sure hope of completed bliss; a growing 
sense (it may be) and comprehension of, and 
longing after, the things of heaven, a com- 
munion with the faithful dead of every age 
and clime, a fellowship with those who have 
been loved ere yet they have been seen, and 
who have served as patterns and examples 
in the ways of holiness ; a gradual develope- 
ment, perhaps, of faculties unknown on 
earth ; a preparation for that last utter change 
which shall take place in a moment, in the 
twinkling of an eye, when the trumpet shall 
sound, and the dead shall be raised incor- 
ruptible. And if aught of memory of this 



188 CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 

lower world shall, as we believe it will, hold 
its place, doubtless it will be such as will 
sooth and tranquillize, and be so modified, 
as not to mar, but to add to, the happiness of 
the disembodied spirit. To suppose that the 
departed know nothing of what passes on 
earth would seem to militate against what 
Scripture has revealed in the parable of the 
Rich man and Lazarus ; and yet to suppose 
that they know all, that they are in a con- 
dition to watch the errors, the weaknesses, 
the sufferings of those they love, and whose 
pilgrimage is not ended, would present a 
difficulty of another kind : for how could 
such knowledge be compatible with a state 
of happiness and rest V The question is 
one on which it is useless to speculate, for it 
is among those secret things which belong 
unto the Lord our God, and which He has 
not thought fit to make known. Yet, which- 
ever be the opinion to which we incline, we 

1 S. Augustine, in his Tract, " De cura pro mortuis gerendis," 
(Tom. iv. p. 192. Paris. 1614.) argues that the souls of the de- 
parted are not cognizant of the affairs of those who are still on 
earth, and makes a beautiful allusion to his mother : " Si rebus 
viventium interessent animso mortuorum, et ipsee nos quando 
eas videmus alloquerentur in somnis, ut de aliis taceam, meip- 



INTERMEDIATE STATE. 



189 



may draw from it a most salutary practical 
inference. If those whom we have loved or 
revered on earth can see us still, how care- 
fully should we abstain from every act which 
it would pain them to witness ! — If, on the 
other hand, they cannot, how worse than 
vain to invoke, as some of another commu- 
nion are inclined to invoke, their interces- 
sion ! 

But, lastly, the dead who die in the Lord 
are blessed, not merely because they rest 



sum pia mater nulla nocte desereret, quae terra marique secuta 
est ut mecum viveret," &c. 

On the other hand, how striking is the opposite view taken 
by a writer in the Lyra Apostolica : — 

" Weep not for me 

* * * 

I still am near ; — ■ 
Watching the smiles I prized on earth, 
Your converse mild, your blameless mirth ; 

Now too I hear, 
Of whispered sounds the tale complete, 
Low prayers and musings sweet. 

A sea before 
The throne is spread ; its pure, still glass, 
Pictures all earth-scenes as they pass. 

We on its shore, 
Share in the bosom of our rest, 

God's knowledge, and are blest.' 1 



190 CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 

from their labours, but because their works 
do follow them. Doubtless, when they had 
done all, they were still unprofitable servants, 
and had done no more than it was their 
duty to do. Doubtless even their best and 
holiest actions were in some degree sullied 
and defiled with the taint and tarnish of 
earthliness. Still, as done by faith in Christ, 
by the aid of His Spirit, through love of 
Him, and the desire to please Him, they 
were a true and laudable service ; and as 
such have been noted and known, remem- 
bered and recorded, so that not one of them 
is lost. Of all else which we have had in 
this world, we can carry nothing with us 
when we leave it ; but our works, which are 
the fruits of our faith, shall follow us to 
Paradise. Not one shall be lost ; they shall 
be laid up in the Book of God's remem- 
brance to be re-produced before men and 
angels. 

Blessed, then, are the dead that die in the 
Lord : and blessed, too, are we the living who 
have yet the space and grace afforded us to 
prepare ourselves so to die. O let us seek 
after that highest of Christian attainments, 



INTERMEDIATE STATE. 191 

the art of dying daily. Let us realize to our- 
selves more and more continually that we are 
strangers and pilgrims, and that the rest of 
Paradise is the only rest to which as yet we 
must allow ourselves to look. Let us learn 
to dwell much and often on its calm repose, 
its blissful communion, its pure light, its 
nearness to the presence of Christ. — Let us 
endeavour to bring our minds more and more 
into that state in which they will harmonize 
most with the unseen world. Let us live 
more with the holy, happy dead, than with 
the living. Let us multiply our petitions to 
Him Who vouchsafed a place in Paradise to 
the penitent thief, that He would remember 
us when He cometh in His kingdom : and 
now and ever let us pray God to grant that 
as we are baptized into the death of His 
blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by 
continual mortifying our corrupt affections 
we may be buried with Him ; and that 
through the grave and gate of death we may 
pass to our joyful resurrection ; for His 
merits, Who died, and was buried, and rose 
again for us, the same Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen. 



LECTURE XII. 

THE LESSER LITANY AND THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

Qtf)t XorU's Praim a J&amtal for tf)e J^tourntr. 
Matthew vi. 10. 

THY WILL BE DONE IN EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. 

It is quite fearful to reflect how many in- 
stances might be named, in which, prac- 
tically at least, men of the present day 
think themselves wiser than God. For 
instance, God tells them that the way to 
knowledge is through obedience; they are 
dissatisfied with this, and so far as they can, 
they put the first last, and the last first. So 
with regard to worldly possessions, God tells 
them that a man's life consisteth not in the 
abundance of things which he possesseth; 
they, on the contrary, go upon the principle, 



194 the lord's prayer 

that the more a man can get, and the more 
he can keep, the happier is he. God tells 
them that the road to heaven is narrow and 
rugged ; they choose a broad and easy path, 
and have no fears but it will bring them to 
eternal bliss. God tells them that a daily 
cross is the indispensable badge of a follower 
of Christ: they persuade themselves that 
they can be safe without it, and that to bear 
it is unnecessary. And it is in the same 
spirit that even in minute details of duty, the 
very fact that God directs men to follow one 
course, inclines them to choose another for 
themselves. Examples of this, taken from 
the (so-called) religion of the day, might be 
quoted to almost any extent ; but I must 
content myself with one, namely, Prayer, — 
reflection upon which has led to these re- 
marks. 

Now, among the objections which are 
most commonly made by a class of persons 
who " run their own ways, and give liking 
unto nothing, but what is framed by them- 
selves, and hammered on their anvil," to 
the Book of Common Prayer, I know none 
so frequently alleged as this, the invariable 



A MANUAL FOR THE MOURNER. 195 

introduction of the Lord's Prayer into every 
office, and its continual repetition. 

Expostulate with such persons on the 
groundlessness and irreverence of their ob- 
jection, and they will readily enough admit 
that the Prayer which the Lord Himself 
taught His disciples must needs be (so far) 
superior to all human compositions ; but 
then they will allege that since it was given 
to the first followers of Christ before the 
Atonement had taken place, and the gifts of 
grace dispensed, it is not so full and com- 
plete as their knowledge and necessities de- 
mand, and, therefore, there is no advantage 
in bringing it forward so prominently and 
continually. 

It is very awful and shocking that well- 
disposed persons should allow themselves so 
to speak ; it is very painful to repeat their 
words, and very humiliating to reflect what 
a spirit of self-will must have grown up 
among us, before any who call themselves 
Christians should have allowed themselves 
to put such objections into words, even if 
they had entered their thoughts. 

That these, and similar objections, how- 



196 the lord's prayer 

ever, are often made, is unhappily notorious. 
Nevertheless, what saith the Scripture % and 
under what circumstances, and with what 
prefatory instructions did our Lord and 
Saviour give this prayer to His disciples'? 
First, we must bear in mind that it was after 
He had been praying Himself, that one of 
His followers,, feeling the need of some form 
of words in which, at all times and seasons, 
he could suitably make his petitions to the 
Throne of Grace, thus preferred his request : 
" Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught 
His disciples." And the Lord's reply, on 
one occasion, was, " When ye pray, say;" on 
another (for that recorded by S. Matthew is 
not the same as that recorded by S. Luke) 
" After this manner pray ye." 

Twice, therefore, in the course of His 
ministry, did our adorable Redeemer give the 
self-same prayer to His followers, as the form 
which he determined to be fittest for their 
use. He did not enjoin them to use it only 
occasionally ; He did not tell them that by 
and by, when He should have ascended up on 
high, it would be well for them to discard it, 
and seek for some more appropriate form of 



A MANUAL FOR THE MOURNER. 197 

supplication. He lays down the rule gene- 
rally, " When ye pray," that is, whenever ye 
pray; at all times, and under all circum- 
stances, let all who are named by the name 
of Christ henceforward make this prayer hold 
the first place in their devotions ; let all their 
other devotions be moulded on this as their 
pattern and model. 

Such is the sense in which the Church 
Catholic has ever understood her Lord's 
words ; and, accordingly, from Apostolic 
times, that prayer has, if I may be allowed 
the expression, begun, pervaded, and con- 
cluded all her services. Whatever be the oc- 
casion, whatever be the tone of feeling by 
which she is actuated, whether her children 
are in joy or sorrow, whether she puts forms 
of penitential contrition into their mouths, or 
whether she bids them raise the voice of 
praise and thanksgiving ; whether she is 
giving expression to their daily needs, in the 
appointed offices of each successive day; 
whether she is admitting the new-born child to 
the font at Baptism ; whether, in after years, 
she leads him to Confirmation and the Holy 
Eucharist ; whether she hallows with her 

s2 



198 THE lord's prayer 

blessing his matrimonial vows ; whether she 
visits him in sickness and declining age; 
whether, when his earthly labours are ended, 
she commits him to his grave as unto a quiet 
bed, in sure and certain hope of the resur- 
rection of the dead, and the life of the world 
to come, — into all her offices she introduces 
this blessed, this glorious, this all-sufficient 
prayer, as embodying in its brief petitions 
whatever is most needed for man under all 
circumstances of soul and body. 

And she does this in the belief that on 
each occasion her children will so offer it as 
to make it applicable to the occasion on 
which it is offered. And if there be only the 
willing mind, and the devout, reverent spirit, 
each such occasion will, as it were, clothe 
its words with a fresh meaning, and draw 
forth from its comprehensiveness a sense not 
thought of before. 

I might profitably call your attention to a 
fuller consideration of this subject, by show- 
ing you how appositely the several clauses in 
the Lord's Prayer may be construed in re- 
lation to each of the various occasions on 
which the Church calls on us to use it in 



A MANUAL FOR THE MOURNER. 199 



common ; but such a discussion would carry 
me too far away from the matter in hand, 
and, therefore, I must content myself with a 
single illustration,— the fitness of its intro- 
duction into the Order for the Burial of the 
Dead. 

It is when our duties to the deceased have 
ended by laying him in his grave, that the 
time seems most appropriate for the com- 
mencement of prayer for ourselves. " The 
deceased," as it has been observed by one of 
our ritualists, with reference to this particu- 
lar portion of the funeral service, " rest from 
their labours ; but we are in the midst of 
our's : they can sin no more, but we may, 
being compassed about with a thousand dan- 
gers : their sentence is past, — we hope to 
their great comfort, — but our's is yet to 
come : they may be called blessed ; but we, 
before our death, cannot be so styled; great 
need and good reason, therefore, is there for 
us to pray for mercy for ourselves : first, to 
the Father, in order to the miseries of this 
life ; secondly, to the Son, in respect to the 
guilt of our sins ; and thirdly, to the Holy 
Ghost, in regard to the power of our corrup- 



200 THE LORD'S PRAYER 

tions ; that the Father may deliver us, the 
Son pardon us, and the Holy Ghost sanctify 
us." 1 

On this account it is that the prayers, 
"Lord have mercy upon us, — Christ have 
mercy upon us, — Lord have mercy upon us," 
are here offered ; and then immediately we 
embody in the Lord's Prayer petitions for all 
things which are most needful both for our 
souls and bodies. We approach God's pre- 
sence and invoke Him, as " Our Father 
which art in heaven." With sorrow round 
us, and death before us, we call on Him as 
the Father of the Spirits of all flesh; as 
the Being Who created them, and Who holds 
their destinies in His Hand ; as the Parent 
and Preserver of all who lived, or have lived, 
or shall live on earth ; Whose Fatherly Eye 
is ever over them, Whose Providential care is 
ever upon them ; but more than this, we in- 
voke Him as " Our Father," as One on 
Whose merciful compassion we have a special 
claim; and yet more, we invoke Him as 
" Our Father which art in Heaven" One 
Who is infinitely raised above the sorrows of 
mortality, — One Who has the dominion over 

* Comber's Guide to the Temple, iv. 444. ; : 



A MANUAL FOR THE MOURNER. 201 

that eternal world, into which our departed 
friend has been removed, — One Who hath it 
in His power to bestow both upon ourselves, 
and upon him whom we mourn, a place and 
portion in His glorious presence. 

" Hallowed be Thy name." What prayer 
can be more becoming, more fit for those on 
whom the realities of life and death have 
come, than this % We own Him to be worthy 
to receive glory, and honour, and power; 
seeing that He has created all things,, and 
that for His pleasure they are and were 
created; and, therefore, we desire that the 
whole universe, heaven and earth, and all 
things therein, the quick and dead (or to 
speak more accurately, those who live, 
whether amid things temporal or things eter- 
nal), may devote all their energies to lauding 
and magnifying Him. " Thy kingdom 
come." We see before us the effects of sin ; 
we see death exerting his dominion over our 
mortal bodies ; we know that while the world 
lasts, the fountains of sorrow will continue to 
overflow the earth with their bitter streams ; 
that day by day, and hour by hour, there will 
be more pain, more tears, more death, more 



202 THE LORD'S PRAYER 

separation. Never will our thraldom cease 
till God's kingdom comes; fitly, therefore, 
may we pray for its advent, if only in our 
prayer the petition, though unexpressed in 
words, be included that we may be enabled 
to prepare ourselves to meet our God. 

And now, since partings are grievous, 
since bereavement is hard to bear, since we 
have a rebellious spirit within, since it is ever 
the tendency of our corrupted nature to mur- 
mur against the dispensations of the Most 
High, we meekly beseech Him that His 
" Will may be done on earth, as it is in hea- 
ven." — Because we know that what is His 
Will is always best for us, we pray that 
whether He order life or death to us or our 
dear friends, yet still His Will, and not oufs, 
may be done, — done with a submission as 
complete as that of the Eternal Son, when 
for us He drank to its very dregs the over- 
flowing cup of the bitterness of the wrath of 
God, — done with a cheerfulness and a willing 
alacrity such as animates the blessed angels 
when they go forth at His command to 
encamp around the dwellings of the just 
and to minister unto them that shall be heirs 
of salvation. 



A MANUAL FOR THE MOURNER. 203 

Nor will the remaining petitions of this 
divine prayer bear a construction less appro- 
priate to the occasion of which we are speak- 
ing than the preceding clauses, for what are 
they but a confession and exposition of the 
miserable condition of us who linger on in 
this mortal life'? — of the need in which we 
stand of daily bread to sustain us, of divine 
mercy to pardon our manifold transgressions 
and offences, of grace and favour to deliver 
us from all sorts of evil, temporal, spiritual, 
and eternal \ 1 

Thus, then, it is manifest that a devout 
and thoughtful mind will find in the Lord's 
Prayer a form of supplication meet for the 
expression of its wants in the season of af- 
fliction. Unhappily for ourselves, there are 
many of us, I fear, who, through the daily 
habit of using this prayer, have, to a great 
extent, lost our feeling of its capabilities to 
express our wants under all the circum- 
stances into which we are thrown amid the 
changes and chances of this mortal life. We 
use it indeed continually, but more as a mat- 
ter of custom, and because by very general 

1 Comber, ubi supra. 



204 THE LORD'S PRAYER 

consent our devotions would not be com- 
plete without it, than because we feel it pecu- 
liarly appropriate to us. Because its peti- 
tions are general, we treat them as though 
they were vague : we are too indolent or too 
thoughtless to give them, as we utter them, a 
particular reference to our own immediate 
condition, and so, for any good to be hoped 
from a prayer offered in such an inconsiderate, 
heartless manner, it might as well have been 
left unsaid. 

One would think that it was an easy thing 
enough to say the Lord's Prayer devoutly, — 
that any man, who was in the habit of pray- 
ing at all, could so far command his thoughts 
as to be able to go through its brief petitions 
without offending God by his formality, or 
distraction of mind, — that the first prayer 
which we teach our children, would not be 
too difficult for ourselves in manhood. And 
yet let us ask ourselves seriously whether we 
have acquired the spirit of prayer or not, by 
taking this as a test, and looking into the 
frame of mind in which we usually offer the 
Lord's Prayer; that is to say, whether we 
ponder on each clause as we utter it, whether 



A MANUAL FOR THE MOURNER. 205 

we consider its applicability to ourselves at 
that particular time, whether we reflect what 
the fulfilment of our supplication would in- 
volve, and really desire that our prayer should 
be acceded to, or whether we repeat the form 
in a listless, perfunctory manner, without 
intentional irreverence, but nevertheless in 
such a way as to give no evidence of a sense 
of God's presence, of a desire to please Him, 
of a fear of offending Him. 

To illustrate this by a single instance. Of 
those who join in the Lord's Prayer in the 
Burial Service at the funeral of one whom 
they have loved, how many are there who 
can offer the petition which I have chosen 
for my text with anything like earnestness 
or sincerity 1 " Thy will be done in earth, 
as it is in heaven !" 

Think what it is which, on such an occa- 
sion, ought to be implied by us in the use of 
such words. And less than this, they cannot 
imply, that, mourners as we are, we do not 
wish our cause of mourning removed ; that if 
we could, we would not have events other 
than they are; that we wholly, and unre- 
servedly, and without . qualification of any 



206 the lord's prayer 

kind, submit ourselves to the chastisement of 
our Heavenly Father ; that we do this now, 
and that we will, with His grace, continue 
to do so hereafter, when the first excitement 
of grief is over, and only the sense of our 
loss, and the dull, aching void occasioned by 
it, remain ; that we desire to go on, though 
in the midst of tears, and bereavements, and 
desolation, to do His Will on earth, even as 
the pure and blessed angels do in heaven ; 
that whatever He may see fit to lay on us, 
we would receive with thankfulness ; that if 
He decrees it, we are willing (as evidence of 
our anxiety to surrender ourselves unto Him 
both in body and soul,) to linger on in this 
vale of tears, to see one after another of those 
who were dearest removed from us, to spend a 
protracted pilgrimage in loneliness, surviving 
all we have loved, living, it may be, in con- 
tinual anxiety or sickness, in poverty or 
contempt ; and yet patiently enduring, and 
only aiming at a state of mind in which God's 
Will shall be our will. 

This, and much more than this, would be 
implied by us if we offered the petition we 
are considering as we ought to offer it ! How 



A MANUAL FOR THE MOURNER. 207 

should such a reflection humble us, how 
should it teach us the immeasurable extent 
of our deficiencies ! If we are unable to serve 
God aright in what seems easy to us, what 
shall we do in those things which are ob- 
viously and confessedly difficult 1 Blessed be 
His Holy Name, His grace is pledged to us, 
and that grace is all-sufficient. But oh, how 
earnestly must we watch over ourselves, how 
diligently must we strive, how zealously must 
we persevere in all the ways of obedience, 
lest we should fail even to perceive how 
much God requires of us, and so should go 
blindfold to perdition ! 

May He teach us how to pray aright! 
May He grant us earnestness and sincerity 
of purpose, faith unfeigned, and stedfastness 
unwearied ! May He lead us forward by 
little and little,, and support our tottering 
steps ! May He save us from lukewarmness 
and backslidiugs ; from despondency, and 
from self-confidence ! May He so fill us 
with His holy love and fear, that to know no 
will but His may be our continual effort 
here, and to do it as it is done in heaven by 
the angels, and with the angels, may be our 
portion of bliss unspeakable hereafter ! 



LECTURE XIII. 

ON THE FIRST OF THE TWO FINAL PRAYERS. 

W)t 3fttsen Sautour tf)t Xortf of Tfytti. antr of IBeatf). 
Revelation i. 17, 18. 

" I AM THE FIRST AND THE LAST : I AM HE THAT 
LIVETH, AND WAS DEAD ; AND, BEHOLD, I AM ALIVE FOR 
EVERMORE, AMEN ; AND HAVE THE KEYS OF HELL AND 
OF DEATH." 

Every privilege which we have here, every 
blessing which we desire hereafter, has its 
source and origin in our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. All we are, or have, or hope 
for, comes from Him, the Lord of all ; — from 
Him, the Author and Giver of all good 
things ; — from Him, the very and eternal Son 
of God, — from Him, very and perfect Man; — 
the Incarnate Word ; — the despised and re- 
jected of Men, the adored of Angels ; — the 

t2 



210 THE RISEN SAVIOUR 

sinless Victim, the crucified Messiah ; — the 
Risen Saviour, the triumphant Conqueror of 
death and hell ; — the ascended and glorified 
Head of the Church ; — the unwearied and all- 
prevailing Mediator, Intercessor, and Advo- 
cate ; — the future Judge of quick and dead. 

No grace, no favour, no mercy, is there, of 
which we are capable, but is bestowed on us 
by Him, or comes to us through Him. Do 
we desire to be admitted into covenant with 
Him, and to be received into His Church'? 
The Apostle tells us that " after that the 
kindness and love of God our Saviour toward 
man appeared, not by works of righteousness 
which we have done, but according to His 
mercy, He saved us, by the washing of re- 
generation and renewing of the Holy Ghost, 
Which He shed on us abundantly through 
Jesus Christ our Saviour. 

Do we sincerely repent of our sins \ It is 
the gift of Christ ; , Whom God hath " ex- 
alted with His right hand to be a Prince and 
a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel and 
forgiveness of sins." 

Are our sins pardoned, cancelled, oblite- 
rated % It is because He hath " blotted out 



THE LORD OF HELL AND DEATH. 211 

the hand-writing of ordinances that was 
against us, which was contrary to us., and 
hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to 
His Cross." It is because in Him we " have 
redemption through His blood, even the for- 
giveness of sins, according to the riches of 
His grace." 

Are we placed in a state of justification I 
To Him alone we owe it ; for the Scripture 
beareth witness that we are " justified freely 
by His grace, through the redemption that is 
in Jesus Christ" — " Who was delivered for 
our offences, and raised again for our justifi- 
cation," — " Who was made sin, that we might 
be made the righteousness of God in Him." 

Are we admitted to the privileges of son- 
ship 1 This grace, too, comes by Jesus 
Christ. — " For," saith S. John, " as many as 
received Him, to them gave He power to be- 
come the sons of God, even to them that 
believe in His Name." Have we ability 
granted us to walk worthy of our high call- 
ing'? It is Christ that gives it us. "I can 
do all things," writes the Apostle, " through 
Christ, Which strengtheneth me." Have we 
the preventing and co-operating aid of the 



212 THE RISEN SAVIOUR 

Holy Ghost conferred on us, to put into our 
hearts good desires, and to bring them to 
good effect % It is the fulfilment of Christ's 
Own promise, " I will pray the Father, and 
He shall give you another Comforter, that 
He may abide with you for ever .... He shall 
teach you all things." 

Have we power to overcome the world 1 
" Who is he that overcometh the world but 
he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of 
God." Can we resist the devil, and cause 
him to flee from us % We owe it to Him, the 
Eternal Son of God, Who was manifested for 
this very purpose, "that He might destroy 
the works of the devil." Are we able to 
face death itself, to defy its power, and to 
triumph over it 1 It is God Which giveth us 
the victory, through Jesus Christ our Lord." 

Lastly, do we aspire to a place among the 
redeemed in heaven 1 " In My Father's 
house," saith the Lord Himself, "are many 
mansions. I go to prepare a place for you ; 
and if I go and prepare a place for you, I 
will come again, and receive you to Myself, 
that where I am, there you may be also." 1 

1 See Bp. Beveridge's Sermon, "Christ the Author of Grace 
and Truth." 



THE LORD OF HELL AND DEATH. 213 

But why is it that all these, and ten thousand 
other inestimable blessings, flow from Christ % 
How is it that we can be certain that He is 
so truly the Way, the Truth, and the Life, as 
that none can come unto the Father, save by 
Him I The answer you will already antici- 
pate. It is because He has been " declared 
to be the Son of God with power, according 
to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection 
from the dead." 

Christ is risen. " Christ is risen from the 
dead and become the first fruits of them that 
slept." " Christ being raised from the dead 
dieth no more : death hath no more dominion 
over him. For in that He died, He died 
unto sin once: but in that He liveth, He 
liveth unto God." All flows from this 
source. The fact of the resurrection once 
established, all else follows of necessary con- 
sequence, — the truth of the Gospel doctrines, 
the acceptance of the Atonement, the setting 
up of the Mediatorial kingdom, the privi- 
leges of the Holy Catholic Church. Hence 
it was that it was deemed needful that they 
who were appointed to the Apostleship 
should be " witnesses of the Resurrection" 



214 THE RISEN SAVIOUR 

Hence it was that the Resurrection was the 
point on which the whole preaching of the 
Apostles turned. Hence it was that, when 
it seemed good unto God to shew unto His 
servant John in Patnios those things which 
in future times should befall the Church, the 
Head of the Church revealed Himself to the 
Apostle as the Risen Saviour. " I was in 
the Spirit/' writes the beloved Apostle, " on 
the Lord's day," (that day of the week, 
namely, on which the Lord rose from the 
dead,) " and heard behind me a great voice as 
of a trumpet .... And I turned to see the 
voice that spake with me. And being 
turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks ; 
and in the midst of the seven candlesticks 
One like unto the Son of Man, clothed with 
a garment down to the foot, and girt about 
the paps with a golden girdle. His Head 
and His hairs were white like wool, as white 
as snow ; and His eyes were as a flame of 
fire ; and His feet like unto fine brass, as if 
they burned in a furnace ; and His voice as 
the sound of many waters. And He had in 
His right hand seven stars : and out of His 
mouth went a sharp two-edged sword : and 



THE LORD OF HELL AND DEATH. 215 

His countenance was as the sun shineth in 
His strength. And when I saw Him, I fell 
at His feet as dead. And He laid His hand 
upon me, saying unto me, Fear not ; I am 
the first and the last ; I am He that liveth 
and was dead ; and, behold, I am alive for 
evermore, Amen ; and have the keys of hell 
and of death." 

Thus the Eternal Son was pleased to re- 
veal Himself, and thus His Church devoutly 
and thankfully contemplates Him. In virtue 
of that power by which He re-assumed the 
life which He had voluntarily laid down, He 
holds the keys of death and hell, extends 
His sovereignty to both worlds, and sways 
those powers which hitherto held man in 
complete subjection. Things temporal and 
things eternal, the visible creation and 
the world unseen, the quick and the dead, 
are alike brought under His dominion. 
While we live, it is His providence which 
sustains us ; when we die, He receives into 
safe keeping our disembodied spirits. He 
directs and controls the fortunes of His 
Church ; He gradually gathers in His elect ; 
He prepares and makes ready the Way for 



216 THE RISEN SAVIOUR 

the final consummation of all things, and for 
transplanting into the bliss of His eternal 
kingdom those faithful servants who have 
walked in His ordinances and kept His 
Covenant. 

It is in acknowledgment of this her belief, 
that our own Church makes her prayer in 
that part of the Burial Service at which we 
have now arrived. The anthem subsequent 
to the interment is succeeded by that lesser 
Litany (as it is called) in which the mercy 
of each Person in the Ever-blessed Trinity is 
invoked, and then follows that Prayer which, 
being the one taught us by the Lord Him- 
self, is never omitted by the Church in any 
of her offices. To this succeeds that form of 
words which embodies the doctrines of which 
I have been speaking. " Almighty God, 
with Whom do live the spirits of them that 
depart hence in the Lord, and with Whom 
the souls of the faithful, after they are de- 
livered from the burden of the flesh, are in 
joy and felicity ; we give Thee hearty thanks, 
for that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this 
our brother out of the miseries of this sinful 
world ; beseeching Thee, that it may please 



THE LORD OF HELL AND DEATH. 217 

Thee, of Thy gracious goodness, shortly to 
accomplish the number of Thine elect, and 
to hasten Thy kingdom ; that we, with all 
those that are departed in the true faith of 
Thy holy Name, may have our perfect con- 
summation and bliss, both in body and soul, 
in Thy eternal and everlasting glory, through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 

Thus the Church teaches her children to 
exhibit their practical belief that life, and 
death, and all things thereto pertaining, are 
under the sovereign control of the Most High. 
She makes her prayer to God, — Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost, — and acknowledges Him 
to be not the God of the dead, but of the 
living, for that death is but a removal to 
another state of existence, not a temporary 
suspension of being, and that " all," in what- 
ever state, ei live to Him : m she expresses 
her thankfulness both for the wisdom and 
mercy of His dispensations, and because this 
world is, through man's transgressions, the 
abode of sin, and sorrow, and death, she 
supplicates Him to hasten the wheels of His 

1 Luke xs. 38. 

U 



218 THE RISEN SAVIOUR 

chariot, to speed the time which is needful 
for the gathering in of the elect, to bring the 
weary, long-continued strife between good 
and ill to an early close, and to unite those 
that linger on in this miserable, darkening 
world, with them who have been removed 
from it, in a land where bliss shall be per- 
fect, and where, like those who enjoy it, it 
shall be eternal. And this she asks for 
Jesus Christ His sake, — for the sake of Him 
Who died for our sins, and rose again for our 
justification, and Who hath proclaimed Him- 
self as " the First and the Last," "the Alpha 
and Omega," the Beginning and End of all 
things ; as He " Who liveth, and was dead, 
and is alive for evermore ;" and Who holdeth 
the keys of hell and of death. 

There is so much of deep and affecting 
interest in this prayer, so many important 
doctrines are contained in it, and it conveys 
so much practical instruction, that I shall 
reserve for future opportunities the consi- 
deration of particular portions of it. At 
present, I will confine myself to a single 
point, and beg you to contrast in your own 
minds the state of the Christian who believes 



THE LORD OF HELL AND DEATH. 219 

his crucified and risen Lord to be the Besur- 
rection and the Life, the First, and the Last, 
and the Living One, 1 the Holder of the keys 
of death and hell, with what his condition 
as a man would be if no such revelation 
had been made. 

Suppose, then, the case of one who, with 
no revelation to guide him, has fallen into 
error concerning the nature of God, while 
nevertheless he has arrived at a conviction of 
the immortality of the soul; suppose him to 
have been endowed with a scrupulous and 
sensitive mind, loving virtue for its own sake, 
and anxious to discharge his duties to God 
and man to the best of his ability. Suppose 
him, however, by habits of self-examination, 
and reflection on the wisdom and goodness 
of the Creator as displayed in His works, and 
on His hatred of sin as developed in the 
general dealings of His providence, — suppose 
such an one to have become satisfied of his 
own miserable deficiencies, — of the extent of 
his sins, negligences, and ignorances, — his 
short-comings and backslidings ; suppose 

Eyda eifxi 6 irpwro?, nal 6 ecr%aTO?, kcu 6 £<Jov» J. 116 passage lOSGS 

both, by the translation and punctuation of our version. 



220 THE RISEN SAVIOUR 

him to have realized in his own person that 
state of feeling described by the Apostle, 
" That which I do, I allow not: for what I 
would, that I do not; but what I hate, that 
I do . . . To will is present with me ; but 
how to perform that which is good, I find 
not. For the good that I would, I do not : 
but the evil which I would not, that I do . . . 
When I would do good, evil is present with 
me. For I delight in the law of God after 
the inward man : but I see another law in 
my members, warring against the law of my 
mind, and bringing me into captivity to the 
law of sin which is in my members." Sup- 
pose that he had persuaded himself that he 
was urged on by some irresistible necessity 
to choose the evil and refuse the good ; and 
suppose, meanwhile, (which would be the 
case) that every succeeding year of his exis- 
tence served but to shew him more and more 
the wretchedness of his condition, that there 
was a daily accumulating burden of unexpi- 
ated sin for which he would have to answer 
before an all-seeing, and all-holy Judge; — 
suppose death at length approaching, and 
the hour of departure known and felt to be 



THE LORD OF HELL AND DEATH. 221 

at hand, — what must be the state of such a 
person's mind'? The greater his conscienti- 
ousness, the deeper would be his dismay ; the 
more correct his views of the perfection of 
the Divine attributes, the fuller would he be 
of apprehension as he speculated upon the 
probabilities of his future destiny. All 
earthly comforters would be unavailing : af- 
fection and tenderness could do nothing to 
allay the deep anxiety of his soul. In vain 
would he exclaim in the extremity of his dis- 
tress, " O wretched man that I am ! who 
shall deliver me from the body of this death V 9 
There would be none to answer, none to con- 
sole, none to deliver. All would be dark 
and terrible foreboding: the best he could 
hope for would be annihilation, that his soul 
should die with his body ; and yet there is 
that within him which would tell him that 
this may not be, but that he shall be pre- 
served to meet an offended God, and to re- 
ceive from Him a sentence of punishment 
more awful than tongue can tell, or heart 
imagine. — And thus he dies ! 

And now contrast with such a case as this 
the state of any Christian, — of any one, that 

u 2 



222 THE RISEN SAVIOUR 

is, who has been admitted into the Church of 
Christ, and has received with all his heart 
the doctrines of the everlasting Gospel. He, 
too, must die ; he, too, must prepare for that 
hour in which earthly help will be unavailing, 
and earthly friends can minister no more, 
and earthly hopes must fail. But he, bowed 
down though he be with the sense of his 
utter inability to meet the gaze of a righteous 
and heart-searching God, with the remem- 
brance of accumulated sins, and frequent 
falls, and imperfect penitences, and his best 
services but a miserable, partial, defective, 
worthless obedience, is still able to see the 
advance of death without despair. He 
stands on the confines of the grave ; but he 
knows that there is One Who hath triumphed 
over it, — Whose, by Baptism, he has been 
made, and in Whose strength he believes 
that even such an one as he is, so weak, so 
vile, may still be more than conqueror. He 
knows that he is about to undergo the first 
part of the sentence denounced on sin, — death 
temporal, but he has been taught where to 
look for refuge from death eternal. He is 
assured that in a few hours more he will 



THE LORD OF HELL AND DEATH. 22S 

have entered the confines of the world un- 
seen ; but he remembers Who it is that 
reigns paramount therein : "I am the First 
and the Last ; I am He that liveth and was 
dead ; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, 
Amen; and have the keys of hell, and of 
death:" he believes that the souls of the 
faithful, after they are delivered from the 
burden of the flesh, do rest in Him in a state 
of joy and felicity: he believes deliverance 
out of the miseries of this sinful world to be 
a source of thankfulness; and he has not 
been afraid to pray that God would hasten 
His kingdom, and bring this world of sin 
and sorrow to an end. Finally, he knows 
that he must stand before the Judge of quick 
and dead to render an account of all the 
deeds done in the body; but in that judg- 
ment-seat he sees, not the formidable array 
of severe, inflexible justice, but a throne of 
grace : in that Judge he recognizes One not 
untouched with human sympathies, but One 
Who knoweth whereof we are made, and re- 
membereth that we are but dust ; — a Saviour 
Who hath partaken of our nature, and known 
its wants, and weakness, and infirmities ; 



224} THE RISEN SAVIOUR THE LORD OF DEATH. 

Who, in His compassion and tender pity, 
hath loved us, and washed us from our sins 
with His Blood, Who destroyed sin upon the 
Cross, triumphed over death and hell by His 
Resurrection, and is now invested with power 
to save to the uttermost All that come unto 
God by Him, seeing that He ever liveth to 
make intercession for them. 

Is it needful that I should pursue the con- 
trast further 1 Is it requisite for me to urge 
you to continual thankfulness for your inesti- 
mable privileges, or to press on you the 
tremendous responsibilities which privileges 
such as ours imply % I would rather lay my 
hand upon my lips and keep silence. Let 
us bow our heads, and cast our eyes upon the 
ground, and meditate on our miseries and our 
mercies. 

" O wretched man that I am ! who shall 
deliver me from the body of this death 1 — 
J thank God, through Jesus Christ Our 
Lord." 



LECTURE XIV. 



FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS ON THE FIRST OF THE TWO 
FINAL PRAYERS. 



Wfyt Christian's IBeliomncc J>p JBeatJ) a source of thankfulness 

to Suroioors. 



Philippians iii. 20, 21. 

" For our conversation is in heaven ; from 
whence also we look for the saviour, the lord 
Jesus Christ : Who shall change our vile body, 
that it may be fashioned like unto hls glorious 
Body, according to the working whereby He is 
able even to subdue all things unto hlmself." 

The presence or absence of that childlike 
docility, which obeys readily and at once, 
without raising questions or making diffi- 
culties, is a sure test of a disciplined or un- 
disciplined mind. The child does what he 
is bidden because he loves his parents, he 



226 THE christian's 

sees that his welfare and happiness are the 
first object of their thoughts, and he knows 
that they are better judges than he can be of 
what is fittest for him, since they are older, 
and wiser than he. He therefore does not 
ask for reasons why he is told to do this 
thing, and to abstain from doing that, but is 
contented to obey simply and trustfully. 

And so the faithful Churchman, in pro- 
portion to his sense of his own weakness and 
infirmity, and his conviction of the wisdom 
and love of that Holy Mother who received 
him into her arms at Baptism, will reverently 
submit himself to her guidance, and dutifully 
and affectionately yield to her injunctions. 
If, in any respect, he finds himself disposed 
to differ from her, he will not be slow to 
think that the error must be in himself; and 
even where he cannot see the advantage to 
be gained from obedience to her injunctions, 
he will (so long as those injunctions are not 
contrary to the law of God) rather acqui- 
esce in them with humility, than venture to 
set up his own judgment in opposition to 
them. So, also, with respect to her ritual 
observances, and the language of her offices ; 



DELIVERANCE BY DEATH. 227 

if there be anything in them which seems 
repugnant to his feelings, or which he feels 
unable to use with sincerity of heart, he 
will, instead of assuming the part of a critic, 
search well into his own heart, and ascertain 
whether there be not some unchecked evil 
temper there, which prevents his spirit from 
harmonizing with that of the Church. 

There are expressions in the Burial Ser- 
vice which have given offence to persons who, 
if they had had a little more humility, and 
less self-confidence, would never have been 
offended thereat ; and to one of these it is my 
purpose to call your attention on the present 
occasion; and I trusting what will be said 
may have the effect of satisfying you that if 
there be anything repugnant to your feelings 
in the passage to which I allude, it is only 
because you have not yet attained to that 
height of devotion to which the Church 
would have you aspire. 

The Church, then, teaches us, at the very 
moment when the sense of the loss we have 
sustained must come home most acutely to 
our hearts, to offer unto God the tribute of 
our grateful adoration for the removal of our 



228 THE christian's 

departed friend from the struggles and sor- 
rows of mortality. " We give Thee hearty 
thanks, for that it hath pleased Thee to deliver 
this our brother out of the miseries of this 
sinful world." 

Now it has been the lot of most of us to have 
to join in this prayer ; and yet it is hardly per- 
haps too much to say, that occasionally, at 
least its language has seemed to jar against 
our feelings: we have been unable to go 
along with it honestly : we have felt that to 
use it aright, we must be in a state of mind 
which, if it be not wholly incomprehensible 
to us, yet, at any rate, is one which is out of 
harmony now, when we are suffering most 
deeply from our bereavement. By and by, 
when years shall have passed away, and our 
wound is healed over, and time has brought 
its alleviations, and we can look on the 
past with calmness, we think we should be 
able to see that all had been ordered for the 
best, and to thank God that one whom we 
loved has been spared much which we, in 
the interim, have been called on to endure ; 
but at present, though the spirit may be 
willing, the flesh is weak ; our loss is too 



DELIVERANCE BY DEATH. 229 

recent, the blow is too stunning, and, to speak 
plainly, our selfish grief is too strong, to 
allow us to be able to say, with anything 
like truth, that we can offer thanks from our 
heart that our brother has been delivered out 
of the miseries of this sinful world. Even 
in those cases, in which a course of pro- 
tracted suffering has worn out both the sick 
man and his attendants, so that the change 
is both a release to the one and a relief to 
the other, we can only join in the Church's 
thanksgiving with some such qualification as 
this, that we are glad our friend has ceased 
to suffer, though we cannot be glad that he is 
removed from us. 

And yet I think, if we were what we 
ought to be, we should be even glad that he 
was gone. 

We all admit readily that this is a world 
of tears, disquiet, unrest, mutability, trouble, 
and misery ; but we find alleviations enough 
in it to make it very endurable, and so, 
tacitly at least, many of us persuade our- 
selves that it is not such a miserable world 
after all. But, where this is the case, it is 
not too much to say, that we have an inade- 



230 THE CHRISTIAN'S 

quate feeling about that which constitutes its 
real misery. The Church does not give 
thanks to God for having delivered one of 
His people " out of the miseries of this 
world," for she knows that what men ordi- 
narily speak of as miseries, — namely, ad- 
versities, troubles, sicknesses, unkindness, 
calumny, and such like, may be turned into 
blessings: the miseries she speaks of are 
those of " this sinful world." It is the pre- 
sence of sin which makes the world a waste 
and howling wilderness, full of snares and 
pitfalls, serpents and Amalekites, from which 
each faithful servant of God desires to escape 
so soon as it shall be God's good pleasure to 
allow his pilgrimage to come to a conclusion. 
Once, indeed, this world was, in some sort, 
our home, even as the wilderness was, for a 
while, the home of the Hebrews; we were 
born in it, and, as children of wrath, we were 
meet for such an inheritance. But as Israel 
passed through the swellings of Jordan to 
become the inhabitants of Canaan, so we, 
emerging from the waters of Baptism, were 
made denizens of a better country, that is, 
an heavenly, which henceforward is our only 
true home. 



DELIVERANCE BY DEATH. 231 

And this is that of which the Apostle 
beareth witness in the text, when he saith 
that " our conversation" (or, as it might have 
been rendered, our citizenship J "is in hea- 
ven; from whence, also, we look for the 
Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; Who shall 
change our vile body, that it may be fashioned 
like unto His glorious Body, according to 
the working whereby He is able even to 
subdue all things unto Himself. " 

We all love our home. When absent 
from it, that is the point to which our 
thoughts turn : we pity none more than those 
who are compelled to sojourn long in a 
foreign country, separated from those who 
are nearest and dearest to them, and from 
the place where they reside; to wish for 
their return in health and safety, is the 
natural impulse of kindness and affection : to 
witness it, is to be partakers of a scene of 
great joy. Now, if this be the case (and 
none, I suppose, will deny it), it may be 
asserted, without fear of contradiction, that 
if we had a vivid sense and practical convic- 
tion of the condition of ourselves and of our 
fellow-christians amid the miseries of this 



232 the christian's 

sinful world, we should be able to yield God 
hearty thanks for the removal of any one of 
them from it. No doubt it will give us pain 
to be separated from a fellow-pilgrim: we 
have, it may be, travelled together for many 
years, side by side, mutually helping and 
comforting each other. And, therefore, not 
to feel some sorrow at parting, even for a 
season, would, in this point of view, be no 
argument that we had attained a high degree 
of spiritual- mindedness, but rather the re- 
verse. Those minds are always the tenderest 
which are most like that of Christ. — We 
shall grieve for our own bereavement ; but 
in proportion as we feel the deep evil of 
sin, — as we dread its clinging contagion, — as 
we realize to ourselves the unwearied malice 
and activity of Satan, shall we be able to rise 
above selfish considerations of personal loss, 
and shall, from our hearts as well as with 
our lips, return thanks to God when it shall 
please Him to deliver some one whom we love 
" out of the miseries of this sinful world." 
We shall part with them in calm and stedfast 
faith ; we shall lay them in their graves in 
sure and certain hope, and their memory will 



DELIVERANCE BY DEATH. 233 

be to us like precious ointment, sweet and 
enduring : no pain (beyond the early tears of 
bereavement) will mingle with the thought of 
them ; remembrance of the past will not be 
clouded with remorse; the future will be 
patient waiting, and humble, yet trustful, 
expectancy. 

But it will be said, and said truly, that 
such a state of things can only occur where 
the mourners and the mourned have walked 
worthy of their Christian calling, and that, 
considering what most men are, it will be 
rather the exception than the usual state of 
things, when those who are engaged in the 
burial of the dead can join with sincerity in 
the words to which we have been alluding. 

To this I reply, that since it is not the 
office of the Church to judge of men's final 
acceptance with God, she has thought good 
to provide one office for all who have lived and 
died in outward communion and fellowship 
with her. 

If, however, the lives of any such have 
been inconsistent with their professions, she 
leaves them to the judgment of God, but does 
not deny them Christian burial, because, 

v 2 



234* THE christian's 

while there is any room for hope, she hopes 
the best. And therein she sets us all a 
most wholesome example. We are far too 
much inclined, generally speaking, to arro- 
gate to ourselves the office of Him, Who 
alone can read hearts, Who knoweth where- 
of we are made, and Who remembereth 
that we are but dust. We, who can neither 
measure the strength of our brethren's temp- 
tations, the degree to which they have 
struggled against them, the amount of their 
ignorance, disadvantages, or bodily infirmi- 
ties, are far too much disposed to pass rash 
censures, to judge them, and condemn them, 
while all the while there may be more faults 
in ourselves than in them. It would be well 
if we reflected more upon this : it would be 
well if we followed the charitable forbearance 
of the Church, remembering always that, even 
in the most painful and distressing cases, 
there is still room to thank God for having 
delivered our erring brother out of the 
miseries of this sinful world, seeing that a 
further continuance in it might have only 
served to increase his guilt, to harden his 
heart, and, by making him more presump- 



DELIVERANCE BY DEATH. 235 

tuous, to have increased the anger of the 
Almighty against him. 

Still it must be admitted that there are 
those whom the Church admits to Christian 
burial, with respect to whom, after the 
largest allowance made on the side of charity, 
we cannot but feel the deepest apprehension 
and alarm. There are sins which no laws 
can touch, sins of the heart, sins of the man 
against himself, which may plunge him in 
eternal perdition, and which may be evident 
to those who live with him, yet of which the 
Church can take no cognizance ; — such, for 
instance, are hypocrisy, covetousness, pride, 
self-righteousness, the worldly mind. 

Not one of these but, lived in and unre- 
pented of, will bring a man to everlasting 
burnings. And if, with proofs before us, in 
which it is impossible to be mistaken, we 
find ourselves forced to believe that one 
whom we are committing to his grave has 
lived in them and died in them, how is it 
possible that we can, with any sincerity, 
thank God for his removal'? To this there 
can be but one answer. Since God willeth 
not that any should perish, we may be sure 



®36 THE CHRISTIAN'S 



that He would not have cut him off while 
there was any hope of his being brought to a 
better state. And, therefore, as I said before, 
it only remains to us to be thankful that 
longer space was not given him in which to 
increase his transgressions, and lengthen the 
Accuser's charges against him. 

A miserable consolation this for sorrowing 
affection ! But it is only ruin to our own 
souls to hide from them the truth. Christ's 
mercies are infinite ; yet from the first page 
of the Bible to the last there is no one word 
to encourage us to expect that His precious 
blood-shedding will avail for the redemption 
of those who have lived and died in practical 
unbelief, or that He will grant admittance 
into His eternal kingdom to any who have 
continued, through their time of trial, servants 
of Satan, or Mammon, or of the world, or of 
their own hearts' lusts. It is miserable to 
think of such persons when they are gone. 
Yet a feeling of misery at the thought of 
God's justice can only arise from an imper- 
fect love of truth and righteousness; and 
therefore the only remedy for this, and all 
other misery, is to bring our hearts into 



DELIVERANCE BY DEATH. 237 

accordance with the Will of God. '•' Shall 
not the Judge of all the earth do right?' 
And heart-breaking as it is to feel that a 
parent, or child, or husband, or wife, or 
brother or sister, have been cut off in a 
course of sin, — have gone to be alone with 
God, and to give an account of their steward- 
ship, we must remember that there is a point 
beyond which the indulgence of sorrow be- 
comes unlawful, and an offence against God ; 
and that He hath Himself declared, " He 
that loveth father or mother more than Me 
is not worthy of Me : and He that loveth son 
or daughter more than Me is not worthy of 
Me." If natural affection often dies away 
by slow decay, through absence, and want of 
correspondence on any topics of mutual in- 
terest, — if we find that we grow estranged 
from our nearest friends on account of every- 
day matters, such as a difference in taste, in 
politics, and common pursuits, how much 
less ought it to interfere with our entire love 
to God, and unreserved submission to His 
Will ! 

And now, having said so much about the 
dead, it is meet that, in conclusion, I should 



238 



THE CHRISTIAN S 



say somewhat of the living, of those whose 
day of grace is not yet over, whose condition, 
how bad soever it may be (if, unhappily, it 
should be so), is still not without hope or 
remedy, — of those who are yet within reach 
of warnings, and the privileges of returning 
penitents. 

There are, as I have already said, cases in 
which, on account of the deceased himself, 
and the misgivings we have with respect to 
his spiritual condition, we find it difficult to 
render our hearty thanks to Almighty God 
for having delivered him out of the miseries 
of this sinful world. But there is another 
ground on which some of us may feel a disin- 
clination to offer such a prayer ; and that is, 
because we feel it a misfortune and misery to 
be removed from this world at all ; because 
we had rather remain in it than be taken 
from it; because in it are our hearts, and 
hopes, and treasure. Hence the ability to 
join in this prayer with sincerity may be 
taken as a test of our spiritual state ; and in 
proportion as we have a repugnance to it, 
may we be satisfied that there is something 
in us which much needs further looking into, 



DELIVERANCE BY DEATH. 239 

and which is an evidence that our hearts are 
not right with God. 

Let us then now, as in the presence of Him 
Whom we cannot deceive, ask ourselves the 
question, whether we have in us any real 
desire to be delivered out of the miseries of 
this sinful world ; let us consider whether, in 
very deed, we think it far better to depart, 
and be with Christ, than to linger on where 
we are. 

Our conversation is in heaven ; that is to 
say, we have, by the privileges of Baptism, 
been made freemen and citizens of an hea- 
venly city ; are we valuing those privileges I 
are we availing ourselves of them ? If we 
are, we shall, as the Apostle tells us in the 
text, be continually " looking for the Sa- 
viour, the Lord Jesus Christ," and His 
second coming ; and, instead of lying in will- 
ing bondage to the world and the flesh, — in- 
stead of grovelling amid earthly objects, and 
being absorbed in them, we shall be growing 
more and more spiritual, be more earnestly 
striving to attain to the mind of Christ, and 
to be made like unto Him " Who shall 
change our vile body, that it may be 



240 THE CHRISTIAN'S 

fashioned like unto His glorious Body, ac- 
cording to the working whereby He is able 
even to subdue all things unto Himself." 

Death, judgment heaven, and hell; these 
are the only things which are worth a care ; 
and these are worth all care. What the 
true Christian aims at " is not to be comfort- 
able here, but safe hereafter." He hopes 
nothing, and fears nothing, except as they 
bear on these things. Let us watch, and 
pray, and strive each of us in his own per- 
son, to make this the rule of our daily life. 
Let us keep ever before us what we are, 
where we are, and how soon the end must 
come ; above all, let us realize to ourselves 
that that death which delivers us from the 
miseries of this sinful world, must transport 
us for ever into one of two states ; that in 
which sin is eternally punished, or that from 
which it is for ever excluded. In the latter 
we have a purchased portion, a portion pur- 
chased by the blood-shedding of the Son of 
God. Let us never rest till we have gained 
possession of it. Let us lay aside every 
weight, and the sin that doth most easily be- 
set us ; let us run with patience the race that 



DELIVERANCE BY DEATH. 241 

is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the 
Author and Finisher of our faith. "Let us not 
sleep as do others, but let us watch and be 
sober ; for God hath not appointed us to 
wrath, but to obtain salvation through our 
Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us, that 
whether we wake or sleep, we should live 
together with Him." 



w 



LECTURE XV. 

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS ON THE FIRST OF THE TWO 
FINAL PRAYERS. 

dfie accomplishment of ti)e number of fyz ISXtzt. 

Revelations xxii; 20. 

" He which testifieth these things saith, Surely 
i come quickly j amen. even so, come, lord jesus." 

Twice in the course of her office for the 
Burial of the Dead does the Church teach 
her children to pray God to speed the ap- 
proach of that time wherein death, " the last 
enemy," " shall be destroyed ;" and the 
Church shall be no longer militant, but 
triumphant; and the Saints shall see their 
Redeemer face to face ; and the purpose for 
which the Mediatorial kingdom was estab- 
lished shall be accomplished ; and the Medi- 



244 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE 

ator having put down all rule, and all autho- 
rity, and power, shall deliver up the kingdom 
to God, even the Father, and subject Himself 
unto Him that put all things under Him, 
that God may be all in all. 

In the Lord's Prayer she makes the 
petition, "Thy kingdom come;" and she 
subsequently shews the meaning which she 
attaches to those words by further beseeching 
God that it may please Him, of His gracious 
goodness, shortly to accomplish the number 
of His elect, and to hasten His kindom. 

Now let us endeavour, by reverent and 
careful meditation on this subject, to render it 
profitable to our souls' health, which no 
doctrine can be, unless it be so received as to 
produce a direct effect upon our practice. 

The words of the text are, with the excep- 
tion of the Apostolic benediction, the last in 
the Bible ; and at the same time that they 
bring to their conclusion the vision and 
prophecy of the Apocalypse, they also termi- 
nate the entire canon of Scripture with a 
declaration and a prayer, than which, none 
more deeply affecting those who read them, 



NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 245 

are to be found in the whole body of the 
inspired writings. 

"He which testifieth these things saith, 
Surely I come quickly." 

And who was He that testified ! He was 
none other than the " Alpha and Omega, the 
beginning and the end, the first and the 
last," — fi the root and off-spring of David, the 
bright and morning star." It was He Who 
had declared, " I will give unto Him that is 
athirst of the fountain of the water of life 
freely ;" Who had said, ie He that overcometh 
shall inherit all things ; and I will be his 
God, and he shall be My son ;" and again, 
"To him that overcometh will I grant to sit 
with Me in My throne, even as I overcame, 
and am set down with My Father in His 
throne." It was He Who, by overcoming 
the sharpness of death, opened the kingdom 
of heaven to all believers ; Who is the Head 
of His Church, and the Maker and Preserver 
of all things, — our Lord Jesus Christ, "Who 
is over all, God blessed for ever." 

And what were the things whereof, by the 
mouth of His angel, He testified % They 
were "the things that" should "be hereafter," 

w2 



246 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE 

" which must shortly come to pass ;" — the 
various destinies which awaited His Church 
in her conflict with the world, — her persecu- 
tions and her exaltation, her depression and 
her triumphs, her strength in weakness, her 
authority in contempt, her wealth in poverty, 
her beauty in uncomeliness, her life in 
death; — the growth and development, in 
successive ages, of those errors and heresies 
wherewith the Truth has been defiled, or 
hidden from view ; the spread of those sinful 
tempers, pride, and sloth, and luxury, and 
covetousness, and the idolatry of self, which 
have been, and will be to the end, the inces- 
sant antagonists of God and His Church ; the 
plagues, and judgments, and vials of wrath, 
wherewith the nations shall be smitten as 
in turn they array themselves against the 
Most High, and league with Satan ; the final 
and complete vindication of the power and 
justice of God by the destruction of His 
enemies ; and the establishment of His 
kingdom in a new heaven and a new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousness. 

These were the things which the Faithful 
and True Witness fi sent and signified by 



NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 247 

His angel to His servant John/' and this was 
His testimony : "I testify unto every man 
that heareth the words of the prophecy of 
this book, If any man shall add unto these 
things, God shall add unto him the plagues 
that are written in this book ; and if any man 
shall take away from the words of the book 
of this prophecy, God shall take away his 
part out of the book of life, and out of the 
holy city, and from the things which are 
written in this book. He which testifieth 
these things saith, Surely I come quickly." 

And then His beloved disciple bursts forth 
with the ardent, heartfelt prayer, " Amen. 
Even so, come, Lord Jesus." 

Already, as a companion of His Lord from 
His Eaptism to His Ascension; — already, 
as His chosen Apostle, the sharer of His suf- 
ferings ; — already, as an exile in Patmos f( for 
the Word of God, and the testimony of Jesus 
Christ," S. John had experienced what the 
spirit of the world was likely to be towards 
the Gospel and the Church ; and now a 
lengthened, revelation had shewn him that 
the history of the Church, from its institution 
to its close, ivould be written in one word, — 



248 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE 

Tribulation ; that the more men loved God, 
and tried to serve Him, the more would they 
be exposed, in all ages and places, to the 
scorn and persecution of them that hate 
Him ; and lastly, that the Church's period of 
probation must continue till the determined 
number of the elect should be gradually 
gathered in, for, when he had seen under 
the altar the souls of them that were slain 
for the word of God, and for the testimony 
which they held, and had heard their cry, 
' c How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost 
Thou not judge and avenge our blood on 
them that dwell on the earth ]" it was granted 
him to witness that white robes were given 
unto every one of them, and to listen while 
"it was said unto them, that they should 
rest yet for a little season, until their fellow- 
servants also, and their brethren, that should 
be killed as they were, should be fulfilled." 

And while thus the miseries of this sinful 
world were brought under the Apostle's view 
in a manner which could hardly fail to 
suggest the thought, that the brightest hour 
in its history would be its last, he is vouch- 
safed a vision of those ineffable glories and 



NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 249 

joys which, when things temporal shall have 
passed away, await the Church of the 
redeemed in heaven; he sees the city of 
their inheritance, — the heavenly Jerusalem, — 
her jewelled foundations, and her jasper 
walls ; her gates of pearl, and streets of gold ; 
her more than noontide brightness, which no 
cloud obscures, and no nightfall ever darkens ; 
her pure river of the water of life proceeding 
out of the throne of God and the Lamb ; her 
tree of life with its healing leaves, and ever- 
ripening fruits. He is taught that in her " there 
shall be no more curse ; but the throne of God 
and of the Lamb shall be in it ; and His 
servants shall serve Him ; and they shall see 
His face, and His name shall be in their 
foreheads. And they shall reign for ever 
and ever." 

No wonder, then, that when He, Who is 
the Head of the Church, Who has appointed 
her all her lengthened vicissitudes, and 
Whose Providence leads her onward through 
them all, was pleased to testify to his Apostle, 
" Surely, I come quickly," that Apostle 
should have uttered a fervent prayer that so 
it should be, (i Amen. , Even so, come, Lord 
Jesus." 



250 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE 

And now, let me ask, why do not we find 
ourselves continually making the same 
prayer, with the same fervour'? why] but 
because we do not, with any real earnestness, 
long after those things which are at God's 
right hand for ever, or because we have no 
desire to escape from that world which, 
nevertheless, by the most solemn act of our 
lives, we have utterly abjured and renounced] 
May God, in His mercy, bring us all to a 
better state of mind ! May He enable us to 
see things as He sees them, and to feel about 
this world, and all that is temporal and 
visible, that they are the things which keep 
us from the highest of all good, admission 
into His presence ! 

And now let me speak briefly on two 
subjects to which meditation on the text 
will probably lead most thoughtful-minded 
persons. 

The first is this. The words of the passage 
under consideration, as elucidated and com- 
mented upon by the Church, in the prayer to 
which I have already alluded, seem clearly 
to contain this doctrine, that the consumma- 
tion of all things will not take place until a 



NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 251 

certain predetermined number out of the 
whole race of mankind, whom God has 
chosen to Himself, shall be completed ; and 
it is for the speedy accomplishment of this 
number that we pray in the Burial Service. 

In every age God has called upon multi- 
tudes to hear His voice and obey Him. He 
has encouraged them by the most cheering 
hopes, has surrounded them with invaluable 
privileges, has provided them help in weak- 
ness, and light in darkness, and lest all these 
should fail, has accompanied His promises 
with the most solemn warnings and awful 
threatenings. He has done all that He 
could do consistently with leaving them to 
their free will and not forcing them against 
that will, to avoid the evil and choose the 
good. 

Nevertheless, His gracious intentions have 
been frustrated by the resolute wilfulness of 
men, who, by their own acts, have prevented 
Him from working out His designs of mercy 
in their favour, and so the end has been that, 
although many have been called, few have 
been chosen. 

It is deplorable to think that the elect 



252 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE 

shall be the few, and the lost the many ; for 
we know, on His Own testimony, that God 
willeth not that any should perish, but 
would have all men to be saved. With 
respect to ourselves, however, (and except as 
a question relating to ourselves individually, 
the proportion of the chosen to be called is 
one upon which it is quite unnecessary for 
us to enter, and which, except as viewed 
with reference to our own practice,, can only 
lead us into bewildering, uncharitable, and 
irreverent speculations), — with respect to 
ourselves, there is not one of us who can have 
any, the smallest doubt, but that it will be 
wholly and solely our own fault if, at the last 
day, we are not found among the elect. For 
we, at least, are no heathen, into whose land 
the sound of the Gospel has not reached • 
we are not among those who, even in (so- 
called) Christian countries, have been left in 
ignorance of the way and will of God ; we 
are not heretics and schismatics, whose un- 
happy lot has placed us on the outside of the 
true fold ; but we are (and let us not for a 
moment forget that the greater our privileges, 
the greater hereafter will be our condemna- 



NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 253 

lion if we have failed to profit by them) 
baptized members of a true and living branch 
of the One Holy Catholic Church; we, from 
our youth up, have lived in the midst of 
Church privileges, have had all necessary 
means of instruction within our reach, have 
been warned and encouraged unceasingly; 
and both by word and good example have 
been taught what Christians ought to be; 
we have had churches in which to worship, 
lawful ministers to instruct us, sacraments, 
solemn ordinances, public prayer, preaching 
of the word, and all other means of grace ; our 
lot, in short, has, through the great goodness 
of God, been fixed under the most favour- 
able circumstances that can be imagined, so 
that nothing is wanting to us which may 
help us onward along the narrow way which 
the few find, and the many miss. 

I repeat, therefore, that whatever may be 
the case with others, we can have no doubt 
as to God's gracious intentions towards our- 
selves. We know that He has called us, 
that He still calls us continually, by every 
ordinance in which we join, by every admo- 
nition we hear, by every mercy and every 

x 



254 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE 

chastisement, and therefore we may be abso- 
lutely certain that as we are of the number of 
the called so He would have us to be of the 
number of the chosen ; and that if at last we 
are not among them, the reason will be not 
that we have been impelled by an irresistible 
necessity to become vessals of wrath, fitted 
for destruction, but because we have delibe- 
rately broken our baptismal vows, hardened 
our hearts, quenched the light of the Spirit 
given us in our regeneration, stopped our 
ears to warnings, closed our eyes to offers of 
mercy, neglected calls, abused opportunities, 
resisted and rejected the method taken by 
our merciful Father to win us to Himself, 
frustrated His designs of mercy, and made of 
none effect, so far as we are concerned, the 
inestimable Death, and all-atoning Sacrifice 
of the Son of God. 

Therefore,, while we read with awe the 
declaration that though many be called few 
are chosen, as reading therein a sentence 
against ourselves if we be living in any 
known sin, or are careless about availing 
ourselves of the privileges which have been 
placed within our reach, we may also derive 



NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 255 

from it sure grounds of unspeakable comfort, 
since it cannot fail to remind us that God 
never willingly casts off those whom He has 
once adopted, and we have an evidence about 
which we cannot be mistaken with respect 
to ourselves, that as He has called us to be 
saints, so He has long since put it in our 
power to become so in making us His chil- 
dren by adoption and grace. Let our hearts, 
therefore, be filled with thankfulness for the 
exceeding mercies which have been shewn to 
ourselves, and let us pray continually that the 
same advantages may be extended to others ; 
that more and more of our brethren that are in 
the world may be called into the one true fold, 
and more and more of them be chosen for 
reception into an eternal and heavenly in- 
heritance, and that we with them, and they 
with us, may be speedily brought to those 
green pastures into which no wolf or robber 
shall ever intrude, and where the great 
Shepherd of the sheep shall feed His flock, 
shall gather the lambs with His arm, and 
carry them in His bosom. 

And this brings me to the other point on 
which I proposed to say a few words. 



256 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE 

" If God," it has been sometimes asked, 
" disposes all things for the best, is it not an 
act of distrust and irreverence to ask Him in 
our prayers to alter the course of His Provi- 
dence'? and are we not, in fact, doing this, 
whenever we beseech Him ' shortly to 
accomplish the number of His elect, and to 
hasten His kingdom V " Would it not be 
more suitable to leave all things to His 
sovereign Wisdom, and not in our ignorance 
and blindness invoke Him to re-consider and 
re-arrange His determined counsels V 9 

Were this sort of argument admitted, it 
would go to supersede the use of all prayer. 
That God allows Himself to be influenced by 
faithful prayer we cannot doubt ; nor can we 
doubt that He does from the first dispose all 
things for the best. Yet these two things 
seem to involve a contradiction. True, they 
seem to do so. But who are we that we 
should presume to stumble, because such 
matters as these are above our comprehen- 
sion % It is enough for us that God has 
bidden us pray without ceasing. Therefore 
our duty is to pray, and instead of hesitating 
and bewildering ourselves with difficulties, to 



NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 257 

go on steadily in the path of obedience, 
nothing doubting but that, in His good time, 
all that is necessary for us to know shall be 
made clear to us. 

In answer, however, to the question 
whether it may not savour of presumption to 
ask God to hasten the arrangements 0/ His 
Providence, I would say, that every petition 
which a Christian offers is made with the 
expressed or tacit reservation, "if such 
should seem good to Him Who is All- wise 
and All-merciful." Whatever we pray for, we 
pray that therein His Will may be done. All 
else is to be in subjection to this. Therefore, 
when we pray Him to " hasten His kingdom," 
we mean to "hasten it in its time." 1 And per- 
haps it was with a view to check any impatient 
over-anxious longing among His servants 
for a speedy deliverance, that in the very next 
clause to that in which they say "Thy kingdom 
come," they were taught to add, " Thy Will 
be done in earth, as it is in heaven." God's 
Will, not our own, is the Christian rule in 
all things. But in subordination to that rule 
we may beseech Him to vouchsafe to us and 

1 See Isaiah, lx. 22. 

X 2 



258 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE 

to His Church those things which,, in the 
best of our judgment, seem most desirable. 
And to pray Him to hasten His kingdom, is 
little more than saying, " Thy kingdom come;" 
it is no more than joining in the prayer of 
him who, when the Saviour said unto him, 
" Surejy, I come quickly," immediately and 
without delay replied, " Amen. Even so, 
come, Lord Jesus." 

" When the Son of Man cometh, will He 
find faith in the earth 1 ?" was the question 
propounded by our Blessed Lord at the close 
of that parable in which He had taught that 
men ought always to pray and not to faint, 
and in which He had declared that God 
would speedily " avenge His Own elect which 
cry day and night unto Him." 

How fearful a supposition would it be, to 
conceive it even possible that a state of things 
could arise in which faith should have de- 
parted and be utterly lost. And yet how can 
we look out upon the world, and not feel the 
fear that if His coming be long delayed, 
something not far removed from so terrible a 
result will be then seen'? Has not faith 



NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 259 

already waxed cold'? 1 Where are ancient 
reverence, and purity, and self-denial, and 
devotion 1 Is not Christendom torn asunder 
by heresies and schisms ] Has not the 
world dispossessed the Cross \ Is not the 
Church depressed and evil-entreated every- 
where ] Is not her authority despised \ her 
laws set at defiance'? her discipline gone 1 ? 
Are not the people proud, self-willed, unduti- 
ful, each one doing what seemeth right in his 
own eyes, and therefore wandering further 
and further from the truth % the scoffer grow- 
ing more bold, and the weak more unsettled, 
and the well-disposed more afraid to speak 
out honestly \ And are not the clergy too 
few, too powerless, and, alas ! that I should 
say it too much oppressed by their own 
infirmities, and the thronging mass of evil, 
to attempt to do more than find palliatives \ 

1 " To say the very truth.," says Sutton in his " Disce Mori," 
" we have no great cause to covet long life in this iron age and 
stony-hearted world; faithfulness is gone, charity is gone, 
devotion is gone, true joy is gone. Men should rejoice in God ; 
there is no such rejoicing now-a-days put in practice ; we see 
some miseries, and wise men foresee more : the righteous is 
taken away 'from the evil to come' (Isaiah lvii. 1), as Grod 
took Josias (2 Kings xxii. 20), because he should not see the 
calamities of sinful people." 



260 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT, ETC. 

What will be the end of such a state of 
things % Surely when we think of them we 
must desire that the weary struggle should 
be ended ! Surely we shall pray our merci- 
ful Lord to accomplish the number of His 
elect, and to hasten His kingdom! Surely 
we shall implore Him that His kingdom may 
come, and His cause prevail, and His Truth 
be received, and His power be acknowledged, 
and His Church may triumph ! Surely we 
shall prepare ourselves for His coming, and 
then pray Him to come shortly ! 

" Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus !" 



LECTURE XVI. 

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS ON THE FIRST OF THE TWO 
FINAL PRAYERS. 

Qtf)t question of ^raprs for tfy Bttitt consfoerrtr. 

2 Timothy i. 18. 

" The Lord grant unto him that he may find 

mercy of the lord in that day." 

"Concerning prayers for the dead," says 
Bishop Jeremy Taylor, " the Church hath 
received no commandment from the Lord J 
and, therefore, concerning it we can have no 
rules nor proportions, but from those imper- 
fect revelations of the state of departed souls, 
and the measures of charity, which can relate 
only to the imperfection of their present 
condition, and the terrors of the Day of 
Judgment." 



262 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

In prefixing, therefore, the text which has 
been just read to a discourse in which that 
subject is about to be considered, I would 
not be understood to assert more with respect 
to it, than that it is one of those passages 
which have been adduced by divines as 
having a probable connection with the 
practice in behalf of which they were look- 
ing for such sanction, direct or indirect, as 
might be found for it in the writings of the 
Apostles. 1 

The person alluded to in the text was 
Onesiphorus, an individual of whom S. Paul 



1 It may be doubted, however, whether the notion of Onesi- 
phorus being dead is not altogether modern. S. Chrysostom 
does not so understand S. Paul. 

In answer to the inquiry why the household is saluted, and 
not the master, Pool (Synopsis V. p. 1108) gives the following 
replies from Grotius and others. "Resp. 1. — Yidetur mihi hie 
Onesiphorus fuisse mortuus, cum haec Paulus scriberet : cui 
quoque favet quod in Prseterito dixit ive^ufe. Quod si ita est, 
validissime eonfirmatur oratio pro fidelibus defunctis. Sed 
longe aliud est aliquem felicitatis gradum, Sanctis in die judicii 
tribuendum, illis precari; quam, precari illis liberationem e 
poenis Purgatorii, quae Ecclesise Romanse praxis est. Pvesp. 2. — 
Quia Onesiphori familia jam Ephesi erat, ubi et ipse residere 
solebat, ubi etiam Paulo ministravit. (v. 18.) Onesiphorus 
autem hoc tempore Pomse fuisse videtur, ut suadetvox levo/ievo?, 
(v. 17,) ubi etiam Paulum qucesivit atque invenit, eumque sine 
metu visitavit et sustentavit." 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDKRED. 263 

speaks to Timothy, as one who had " oft 
refreshed" him, who was not ashamed of 
"his chain," and who, writes the Apostle, 
" when he was in Rome, sought me out very 
diligently, and found me." 1 

Now, considering how much it was S. 
Paul's habit, in all his epistles, to send affec- 
tionate words of greeting to individual mem- 
bers of any Church to which he was writing, 
and especially to those who had shewn him 
personal kindness, it would be only natural to 
expect that (if there were any allusion to him 
at all) we should have found some direct 
messages to Onesiphorus, whom, from the 
expressions already quoted, we know to have 
had so high a place in his esteem ; but in- 
stead of this, although in this short epistle 
S. Paul twice mentions his household, 
" Salute the household of Onesiphorus," 
and " The Lord give mercy unto the house of 
Onesiphorus ;" to himself the Apostle sends 
no salutation, but only utters the prayer 
that the Lord may " shew him mercy" in the 
day of final account. 

Certainly, when we place these passages 

1 2 Tim. i. 16, 17. ■ * 2 Tim. iv. 19. 



264 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

side by side, the term of expression in the 
message to the household suggests the notion 
that they might have been in trouble, and 
needed comfort, while the language with 
respect to Onesiphorus himself might be 
taken to imply that his time of probation in 
this world was ended. And if 'this conjecture 
could be proved to be correct, of course we 
should have evidence that S. Paul used at 
least an imprecatory form of prayer for the 
dead. 

The passage, however, will bear another 
construction, which is quite as probable as 
that just mentioned. If Onesiphorus (who 
may have been an Ephesian merchant) was 
now absent from home, visiting, it may be, 
various ports on the business of his calling 
(and we know from this very chapter that he 
had lately been at Rome), there is at once an 
obvious reason why the Apostle's salutation 
w 7 as sent to the household only. 1 

It is clear, therefore, that we cannot speak 
positively as to the doctrine contained in the 
passage under consideration; and I am not 
aware of any other text in the Scriptures, 

1 See Appendix A. 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDERED. 265 

either of the Old or of the New Testament, 
on which we can build with any greater 
confidence. There is, indeed, a direct enun- 
ciation of the doctrine that it is not "super- 
fluous and vain to pray for the dead" 1 in the 
second Book of the Maccabees ; but I need 
not remind you that that portion of the sacred 
volume which is called the Apocrypha, though 
read by the Church for example of life and 
instruction of manners, is never applied by 
her to establish any doctrine. 

On the whole, then, we conclude that the 
practice of praying for the dead is nowhere 
inculcated upon us in the canonical Scrip- 
tures ; but at the same time, I think that a 
careful and unprejudiced study of the subject 
will incline us to the belief that it is nowhere 
forbidden. We cannot prove it to be a duty ; 
nor yet, so far as I know, is there any reason 
why those who look on it as a privilege, 
should be taught that they are in error, and 
that it would be wrong to avail themselves of 
it. 

Nevertheless, whether following what a 
prelate of our Church calls " a dictate of 

1 2 Maccabees xiii. 44. 



266 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

human nature," 1 or receiving the practice 
from Apostolical condition, no fact is more 
fully established than this, that, in the first 
and holiest ages of the Church, prayers for 
the dead were offered universally, and formed 
a portion of the usual devotions of public 
worship. The first Christians not only, as 
Origen says, " thought it convenient to make 
mention of the Saints in their prayers, and to 
excite themselves to holiness by the remem- 
brance of them," 2 — not only blessed God's 
holy Name for all His servants departed this 
life in His faith and fear, but they prayed 
Him for actual blessings to be conferred on 
them : " Rem ember, O Lord," (I am quoting 
one of the ancient forms) " all Thy servants, 
men and women, who have gone before us in 
the seal of the faith, and sleep in the sleep of 
peace : we beseech Thee, Lord, to grant 
them, and all that rest in Christ, a place of 
refreshment, light, and peace, through the 
same Jesus Christ our Lord." 

And had prayers for the dead not gone 
beyond such language as this, and been 

1 See Bp. Short's History of the English Church §. 15. 
* See Bingham (Edit. 1839.) Vol. v. p. 107. 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDERED. 267 

mixed up with no other doctrine, — had men 
restricted themselves to a form of words, in 
which it would have been shewn that their 
desire was, that since few have maintained the 
purity of their baptismal vows, God would 
be pleased to deal with the departed accord- 
ing to His mercy, not according to their 
merits ; had it been the object of their prayers 
to shew affection for the dead, and belief in 
the soul's immortality ; to testify their earnest 
desire that both quick and dead might attain 
to the blessedness of a resurrection to life and 
glory; and lastly, had it been an urgent 
reason with them for the adoption of such 
prayers, that thereby they " put a distinction 
between the perfection of Christ, and the 
imperfection of all other men, saints, martyrs, 
apostles, prophets, confessors and the like, 
He being the only Person for Whom prayer 
was not then made in the Church," 1 — if, I 
say, supplications on behalf of the dead had 

1 Epiphanius : quoted by Bingham, Antiq. Book xv. ch. 3. 
It is a very important consideration, as an argument against the 
Romish notion, which connects prayers for the dead with the 
doctrine of Purgatory, that, in the first ages, the Blessed Virgin, 
the Apostles and Evangelists, were always prayed for. And it 
could hardly be supposed that such prayers were made for their 



268 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

not gone beyond "prayer for the resurrection, 
public acquittal in the day of judgment, and 
bliss of them that are fallen asleep," 1 there 
would have been no reason why the primi- 
tive practice should have been laid aside in 
any part of Christendom. 

But in process of time, as corruptions 
spread, that most cruel and most pernicious 
doctrine of Purgatory took root, and men were 
taught that it was right to pray for the deliver- 
ence of the souls of the departed out of some 
place in which it was asserted that they were 
purged by fire from carnal impurities before 
they could be received into heaven. 2 Upon 

deliverance out of penitential fires. It is also worthy of remark 
that this ancient practice makes strongly against another 
Komish doctrine, — the Invocation of Saints. Nobody in their 
senses would think of praying for and to the same person. 

i Field, Of the Church, p. 750. 

2 Bishop Bull, in his Sermon on the Middle State of Happi- 
ness or Misery, (Vol. i. p. 124, Edit. 1713) thus writes : — 

"The true rise and growth of the doctrine of Purgatory is 
plainly this. About the middle of the third century, Origen, 
among other Platonic conceits of his, vented this, — that all 
the faithful (the Apostles themselves not excepted) shall, at 
the day of judgment, pass through a purgatory fire, the fire of 
the great conflagration, which they shall endure for a longer or 
shorter time, according as their imperfections require a greater 
or lesser purgation. And in this conceit, directly contrary to 
many express texts of Scripture, he was followed for the great- 
ness of his name, by some other great men in the Church of 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDERED. 269 

this foundation of error a fabric of fearful 
superstition was reared, which was widened 
and heightened continually, till at length 
it became too heavy for the base on which it 
stood; then fell by its own weight, and 
buried under its ruins many things of value. i 

God. But how different this Purgatory is from the Roman, 
every man of sense will presently discern. Afterwards, about 
the end of the fourth, or the beginning of the fifth century, S. 
Austin began to doubt whether this imagined Purgation were 
not to be made in the interval between Death and the Resur- 
rection, at least as to the souls of the more imperfect Christians. 
And 'tis strange to observe, how he is off and on in this ques- 
tion. And yet it is not strange neither, considering how easily 
he may, nay, how necessarily he must, be at a loss, that leaves 
the plain and beaten path of Holy Scripture and primitive 
tradition, to hunt after his own conceits and imaginations. 
Towards the end of the fifth Century, Pope Gregory, a man 
known to be superstitious enough, undertook dogmatically 
to assert the problem, and with might and main set himself 
prove it, chiefly from the idle stories of apparitions of souls 
coming out of Purgatory. Pour hundred years after, Pope 
John the Eighteenth, or, as some say, the Nineteenth, insti- 
tuted a holy-day, wherein he severely required all men to 
pray for the Souls in Purgatory. As if the Catholic Church 
before him had been deficient in their charity, and forgotten the 
miserable souls in place of torment. At length the Cabal at 
Florence, in the year 1439, turned the dream into an article of 
Faith, so that now they are damned to hell, that will not 
believe a Purgatory. And the Pope's vassals still tenaciously 
hold and fiercely maintain the doctrine, not so much for the 
godliness as for the gain of it." 

1 " Prayers for the dead as founded on the hypothesis of 
purgatory (and we no otherwise reject them), fall together with 
it." Bp. Bull, as above. y 2 



270 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

And men have been afraid to attempt to 
make the recovery of what was so lost, lest, 
haply, in the search they should become 
entangled in the rubbish, or lest, in some 
unskilful effort to remove a cumbrous frag- 
ment out of the way, it should fall on them 
and grind them to powder. 

The Church of England, while she con- 
tinued in communion with that of Rome, was 
a partaker of her superstitions on the subject 
of purgatory. At the Reformation, however, 
those who prepared the first book of Common 
Prayer, while they carefully avoided allusion 
to that most unscriptural doctrine, by no 
means thought it necessary to exclude 
prayers for the dead from our services. They 
knew 1 that there was no necessary connection 

2 " Our Romanists indeed do commonly take it for granted 
that Purgatory and Prayer for the Dead be so closely linked 
together, that the one doth necessarily follow the other : but in so 
doing they reckon without their host, and greatly mistake the 
matter. For however they may deal with their own devices as 
they please, and link their prayers with their Purgatory as 
closely as they list, yet shall they never be able to shew, that 
the Commemoration and Prayers for the Dead, used bv the 
Ancient Church, had any relation to their Purgatory; and 
therefore whatsoever they were, Popish Prayers we are sure 
they were not." 

Abp. Usher's Answer to a Jesuit, p. 133. Edit. 1676. 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDERED. 271 

between the two doctrines, and holding that 
the abuse of a good thing ought not to take 
away its use, they were not afraid to use such 
prayers for the dead as were used in the first 
ages. In the Communion Service they praised 
God for all His Saints departed, they com- 
mended them to His mercy, and besought 
Him to grant them a portion of everlasting 
peace. 1 

In the Office for the Burial of the Dead 
they commended the soul of the deceased to 
God, implored that he might be saved from 
the punishment of his sins, from the gates of 



1 The conclusion of the Prayer for the Church Militant in 
the first Book of Edward VI. (1549) was as follows : — 

" We do give unto Thee most high praise and hearty thanks 
for the wonderful grace and virtue, declared in all Thy Saints 
from the beginning of the world : and chiefly in the glorious 
and most blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Thy Son Jesu Christ, 
our Lord and God, and in the holy Patriarchs, Prophets, 
Apostles, and Martyrs, whose examples, O Lord, and stedfast- 
ness in Thy faith, and keeping Thy holy commandments, grant 
us to follow. We commend unto Thy mercy all other Thy 
servants, which are departed hence from us, with the sign of 
faith, and now do rest in the sleep of peace. Grant unto them, 
we beseech Thee, Thy mercy and everlasting peace, and that 
at the day of the general resurrection, we, and all they which 
be of the mystical body of Thy Son, may altogether be set on 
His right hand, and hear that His most joyful voice : Come 
unto Me, O ye that be blessed of My Father," &c. &c. 



272 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

hell and the pains of eternal darkness, and 
that a place and portion might be conceded 
to him in heaven. 1 

And they retained a beautiful and most 
edifying custom, which had universally pre- 
vailed in the Church from Apostolic times, 2 
and in which, as heretofore, there was a 
special prayer for the departed ; they did not 

1 At the interment the form was, " I commend thy soul to 
God the Father Almighty, and thy body to the ground," &c. 

The Prayers which immediately followed the Anthem (" I 
heard a voice from heaven"), besought God for the final accept- 
ance the deceased, returned thanks for his deliverance " from the 
miseries of this wretched world, from the body of death, and 
all temptations," and prayed that " at the day of judgment his 
soul might fully receive God's promises, and be made perfect." 
And the following was the form used in place of that offered at 
present as the first of the two final prayers : — 

" O Lord, with Whom do live the spirits of them that be dead ; 
and in Whom the souls of them that be elected, after they be 
delivered from the burden of the flesh, be in joy and felicity; 
Grant unto this Thy servant, that the sins which he committed 
in this world be not imparted unto him ; but that he, escaping 
the gates of hell, and pains of eternal darkness, may ever dwell 
in the region of light with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the 
place where is no weeping, sorrow, nor heaviness ; and when 
that the dreadful day of resurrection shall come, make him to 
rise also with the just and righteous, and receive this body 
again to glory, then made pure and incorruptible : set him on 
the right hand of Thy Son Jesus Christ, among Thy holy elect, 
that he may hear with them, these most sweet and comfortable 
words, Come to Me, ye blessed of My Father," &c, &c. 
2 See Appendix B. 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDERED. 273 

leave the Church (as we, alas ! for our sins 
have been left) without an Office for " the 
Celebration of the Holy Communion when 
there is a Burial of the Dead." 1 

But there lived in those days, as in our 
own, many men who loved change for its own 
sake, and so had little thought "what they 
changed from, or what they changed to, or 
where there was to be an end of changing ;" 
and others there were who grew bewildered 
among the strife of contending opinions, and 
were not unwilling to surrender their own 
judgments for the sake of peace. Had our 
own Reformers been left to themselves, had 
there been no intrigues with Continental 
Protestants, it seems probable that we should 
have got rid of all that was superstitious and 
unscriptural, and preserved without loss all 
that was Catholic. But our national trans- 
gressions had been too heavy; we had 
offended God too deeply by a course of the 
most horrible and iniquitous sacrilege. And 



1 This office had for its Introit, the Psalm " Quemadmodum" 
(Ps. xlii.) ; for its Collect, the last prayer in the present Burial 
Service, slightly altered; for its Epistle, 1. Thess. iv. 13 — 18 ; 
and for its Gospel, John vi. 37 — 39. 



274 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

we were made to feel that we could not offend 
Him without suffering loss. 

In an evil hour, foreigners were invited to 
assist in remodelling the offices of our Church, 
and having neither sympathy with us, nor 
with the usages of primitive times, they 
touched nothing without marring it, and 
though much of their mischief was overruled, 
we were doomed to the loss of a considerable 
portion of Catholic (as contradistinguished 
from Romish) doctrine ; and such loss is, in 
almost all instances, attributable to their 
influence. Yet God has been far more 
merciful to us than we deserved; for, after 
all, we suffered no such loss as did that 
miserable Church (if it can be so called) 
abroad, whose name is most associated with 
that of Calvin; and in the course of the last 
three hundred years all the alterations in the 
Prayer-book have been in a Catholic direc- 
tion, a retracing of our steps to what we were 
before the ultra-Protestant and Puritanical 
counsels of Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr 
had been yielded to. 

Still we suffered loss ; and, among things 
of lesser consequence, the loss of public 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDERED. 275 

prayers for the dead. I say, among things 
of lesser consequence, because we must draw 
a very wide distinction between things en- 
joined in Scripture, and those which have 
only the sanction of the Church to recom- 
mend them to our observance ; and, secondly, 
because the practice had been so mingled 
with superstition, that (human nature being 
what it is) it would perhaps have been impos- 
sible for the mass of the people, educated 
as they had been in Eomish doctrine, to have 
made at once a distinction between the one 
and the other. Surely, therefore, it was, on 
the whole, a less evil that prayers for the 
dead should be laid aside altogether (seeing 
that their use cannot be proved to be neces- 
sary) than that, through means of them, so 
perilous an error as that of a belief in purga- 
tory should be maintained in the minds of 
the ignorant. Surely it was a less evil to 
dispense with the administration of the Holy 
Eucharist at funerals, than to have it gene- 
rally believed that masses for the dead were 
of any value, or that the Sacrifice then 
offered would avail for the salvation of those 
who, while living, might have practically 



276 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

denied Christ, and who might have died 
in mortal sin. 

But, it will be asked, has the Church of 
England wholly discarded prayers for the 
dead from her formularies I We know that 
our Reformers subsequently excluded certain 
prayers which they had at first introduced, 
and that they did this at the instigation of 
Bucer, or because they felt such a change 
forced on them by the great mass of error 
contained in the doctrines of Rome, and the 
popular interpretation of those doctrines. Is 
this fact to be taken as an evidence that any 
vestiges of the practice which may still be 
retained in our Prayer Book have been left 
there by some accidental (or, since nothing is 
the result of accident, providential) over- 
sight % 

Now, if we give a careful consideration to 
these inquiries, we shall probably come to this 
conclusion, that it has been the Church's 
object to withdraw from her formularies all di- 
rect encouragement ; to abstain from distinctly 
authorizing it ; and yet to shew incidentally 
that if any one of her children can conscien- 
tiously engage in it, she will not only not 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDERED. 277 

blame and condemn him, she will not call on 
him to forego what he feels to be a privilege, 
but she will even give him a clew whereby he 
may discover to what points, in her opinion, 
such prayers should be restricted. She 
intimates that such prayers should be as 
general as possible in the language of their 
petitions, and should rather bear reference to 
the whole body of the faithful departed than 
to any particular individuals. In her Com- 
munion Service she blesses God's holy name 
for all His servants departed this life in His 
faith and fear, beseeching Him to give us 
grace so to follow their good examples, that 
with them we may be partakers of His hea- 
venly kingdom. 1 In the same office she 
beseeches God to grant that, by the merits 
and death of His Son Jesus Christ, and 
through faith in His blood, " we and all Thy 
whole Church" (and surely none would pre- 
sume to speak of the living only as consti- 
tuting all the whole Church) " may obtain 
remission of our sins, and all other benefits 

1 It should not be forgotten that this final petition in the 
prayer for the Church Militant was introduced so lately as in 
1661. 



278 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

of His Passion." In the order for the burial 
of the dead we pray Him, that we, with all 
those that are departed in the true faith of 
His holy name, may have our perfect con- 
summation and bliss, both in body and soul, 
in His eternal and everlasting glory.' 



"1 



1 "Which," says Wheatley, (Rat. 111. xii. 4,) "is not barely 
a supposition, that all those who are so departed will have their 
perfect consummation and bliss ; but a prayer also that they 
may have it, viz., that we with them, and they with us, may be 
made perfect together, both in body and soul, in the eternal and 
everlasting glory of God. For 'though' (saith Bishop Cosin upon 
this very prayer) 'the souls of the faithful be in joy and 
felicity, yet because they are not in such a degree of that joy 
and felicity, as that they can never receive no more than they 
have already; therefore, in the latter part here of this our 
prayer, we beseech God to give them a full and perfect consum- 
mation of bliss both in body and soul in His eternal kingdom 
of glory, which is yet to come. And whatsoever the effect and 
fruit of this prayer will be, though it be uncertain, yet hereby 
we shew that charity which we owe to all those that are fellow- 
servants with us to Christ : and in this regard our prayers 
cannot be condemned, being neither impious nor unfit for those 
that profess the Christian religion. For, in like manner, if I 
should make a prayer for my father or mother, for my brother 
or sister, for my son or daughter, or any other friend of mine, 
who were travelling in a journey, beseeching Him that He 
would prosper them in their way, and keep them from all 
danger and sickness, till they should safely and happily arrive 
at their journey's end, and the place where they desire to be ; 
although at the same time, when I prayed this for them, per- 
adventure they be arrived at the place already (which I knew 
not) with all safety, and met with no danger or diseases by 
the way, whereby all my prayer is prevented ; yet the solici- 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDKRED. 279 

Now I will not take upon myself to say 
that these are direct prayers for the dead; 
but this I will say, that they are so far indi- 
cations of the mind of the Church, that while 

tude and charity, in the mean time, that I had for them, cannot 
be justly or charitably reprehended by any others.' Much to 
the same purpose just before: 'Although' (saith he) 'it can- 
not be exactly and distinctly declared what benefit the dead 
receive by these prayers which the living make for them ; yet, if 
there be nothing else, there is this at least in it, that hereby is 
declared the communion and conjunction which we have still 
with one another, as members of the same body wher. of Christ 
is the head.' So also before him Bishop Overall, in his notes 
upon this same place : ' The Puritans' (saith he) ' think that 
here is prayer for the dead allowed and practised by the Church 
of England ; and so think I ; but we are not both in one mind 
for censuring the Church for so doing. They say it is Popish 
and superstitious ; I, for my part, esteem it pious and Christian. 
The body lies dead in the grave, but by Christ's power and 
God's goodness shall men be raised up again : and the benefit 
is so great, that sure it is worth the praying for ; because then 
we may pray for what we ourselves or our deceased brethren as 
yet have not ; therefore doth the Church pray for the perfect 
consummation of bliss, both in soul and body, to be given to our 
brethren departed. We believe the Resurrection, yet may 
pray for it as we do for God's kingdom to come. Besides, prayer 
for the dead cannot be denied but to have been universally 
used of all Christians in the ancientest and purest times of the 
Church, and by the Greek fathers, who never admitted any 
Purgatory no more than we do, and yet pray for the dead not- 
withstanding. What though their souls be in bliss already ? 
they may have a greater degree of bliss by our prayers ; and 
when their bodies come to be raised, and joined to their souls 
again, they shall be sure of a better state. Our prayer for them, 
then, will not be in vain, were it but for that alone.' " 



£80 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

they stand in the Prayer Book no one has a 
right to say that she condemns the practice. 

Reason good is there why she should 
exercise the extremest caution and reserve on 
the subject. The practice rests on no 
positive command in Scripture; to abstain 
from it cannot be unsafe ; to adopt it publicly 
in her formularies might be to lay the train 
for future mischief; might lead to the intro- 
duction of worse evils than those from which 
we have escaped. The error of purgatory 
was bad enough, but a hundred-fold worse 
would be the assertion of an opinion that 
prayers for the dead might avail for the 
salvation of those who have not died in God's 
faith and fear ; and our standard of religion 
is already so miserably low, that it is far 
from unlikely that such a doctrine would be 
eagerly received among us, were opportunity 
given for its introduction. 

On the whole, the points which it has 
been attempted to establish are these : that 
prayers for the dead have no certain warranty 
of Holy Scripture, yet that they are in no 
way repugnant to the teaching of the word of 
God : that they have the authority of Catho- 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDERED. 281 

lie tradition, and were the practice of the 
Universal Church for many ages : that in the 
Early Church (as in the Greek Church 
still 1 ), prayers for the dead did not involve 
any idea of purgatory, — that cruel invention 
of a later age : that the Church of England 
has excluded from her ritual prayers for the 
dead, which she at first adopted, and that she 
nowhere authorizes their use; but that, at 
the same time, she nowhere condemns them ; 
" nor" as Collyer, the Church Historian, has 
observed, "does she restrain her children 
from praying for their departed friends, if 
this approves itself to their consciences." 

The question, therefore, so far as indivi- 
dual Churchmen are concerned, seems to be 
an open one, and charity and mutual forbear- 
ance towards each other are the urgent duties 
both of those who follow the practice, and of 
those who reject it. 

Does any one feel himself opposed to it? 
is he inclined to decry it as anti-scriptural, 
superstitious, useless] He is not bound to 
adopt it, then, in his own person. He may 
see the grave close over those he loves, and 

1 Bingham, vol. v. p. 123. 

z 2 



282 THE QUESTION OF PRAYERS 

may rest satisfied that he has done all that 
was necessary in commending their souls to 
God while they yet lived. But let not his 
opinion carry him further : let him not bandy 
about harsh words, and impute evil motives 
to those who differ from him. Let him be 
sure he has excelled the primitive Church in 
humility as well as holiness before he takes 
on him to pass a sweeping and unqualified 
condemnation on what she universally prac- 
tised, and let him pause, at least, and consider 
whether a custom which has had the sanction 
of such names as Bull, and Barrow, and 
Usher, and Jeremy Taylor, and Hammond, 
and Laud, and Andrewes, and Buckeridge, 
and Cosin, and Overall, and Thorndike, and 
Wheatley, among ourselves, need call for a 
noisy and unmeasured reprobation. 1 

1 It is worthy of remark that the epitaphs of two of the 
divines above mentioned (epitaphs drawn up by themselves) con- 
tain a distinct reference to the text, thus shewing that in their 
view of the passage, Onesiphorus was dead when S. Paul invoked 
God's mercy on his soul. The epitaph of Wheatley thus con- 
cludes, " Reader, join for him in the ejaculation of S. Paul : — 
The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord 
in that day." The beautiful inscription on Bp. Barrow's tomb 
at S. Asaph was in these words : " exuviae isaaci asaphensis 

EPISCOPI, IN MANUM DOMINI DEPOSITEE, IN SPEM L^ETiE RESUR- 
RECTIONIS, PER SOLA CIIRISTI MERITA. O VOS TRANSEUNTES IN 



FOR THE DEAD CONSIDERED. 283 

And for those, if any such there be among 
us, who upon mature reflection have adopted 
the practice of prayer for the dead, let me 
urge them to bear in silence all reproaches 
that may be cast upon the custom in which 
they find comfort. There is no need why 
others should know the nature of their 
prayers : rather it is far better that they 
should not speak about them at all. If they 
have consolation in the practice, let them 
have it to themselves. To their own Master 
they stand or fall. God sees their hearts, 
knows their motives, and certainly, if ever we 
can be sure that we are actuated by a pure 
and disinterested motive, it is when we are 
secretly praying for the dead. Our heavenly 
Father sees and appreciates what the rude, 
bad world cannot see. Let them, therefore, 
not be discouraged from doing what they 
think right. But at the same time, let them 
make great allowance for those who differ 
from them, and for the natural and almost 

DOMUM DOMINI, DOMUM ORATIONIS, ORATE PRO CONSERVO VESTRO, 
UT INVENIAT MISERICORDIAM IN DIE DOMINI." It appears from 

Antony Wood that this epitaph gave great offence to the 
Puritans; but, he added, "let them say what they will, the 
said Bishop was a virtuous, generous, and godly man, and a 
true son of the Church of England." 



284> PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD CONSIDERED. 

justifiable prejudices of those who, in their 
dread of Eomish error have looked on prayers 
for the dead as involving a necessary belief 
in Purgatory. 

Above all, let them take care to harbour 
no spirit of anger or irritation ; to struggle 
against feelings of loneliness and despon- 
dency ; and when exposed (if such should be 
the case, and through no fault of ther own) to 
railing accusations, and party clamour, and 
the blasphemy of the multitude, which ever 
speaks cruelly, disdainfully, and despitefully, 
to think of the plenteousness of that goodness 
which God has laid up for them that fear 
Him, and which He has prepared for them 
that put their trust in Him, even before the 
sons of men ; to consider His power to hide 
them privily by His own presence from the 
provokiug of all men, and to keep them 
secretly in His tabernacle from the strife of 
tongues ; and ever to remember the glorious 
promise, "Blessed are ye, when men shall 
revile you, and persecute you, and speak all 
manner of evil against you falsely for My 
sake. Eejoice, and be exceeding glad; for 
great is your reward in heaven." 



APPENDIX A. 



The following are the remarks of Hammond (Paraph. 
p. 707) on this passage : — 

"What o?ico9 'OvrjaKpopov, the house of Onesiphorus, 
here signifies, is thought fit to be examined by some in 
order to the doctrine of praying for the dead. For be- 
cause the prayer is here for the household, and not for 
the master of it, Onesiphorus himself, it is by some 
presently concluded that Onesiphorus was dead at that 
time. And then that being supposed, it appears, v. 18, 
that S. Paul prayes for him, that he may find mercy in 
that day. How far it may be fit to pray for them that 
are departed this life, needs not to be disputed here. 
'Tis certain that some measure of bliss, which shall at 
the day of Judgment be vouchsafed the Saints, when 
their bodies and souls shall be re-united, is not till then 
enjoyed by them, and therefore may safely and fitly be 
prayed for them (in the same manner as Christ prayes 
to His Father, to glorifie Him with with that glory which 
He had before the world ivas.J And this is a very 
distant thing from that prayer which is now used in the 
Roman Catholic Church for deliverance from temporal 
pains, founded in their doctrine of Purgatory, which 
would no way be conclusible from hence, though Onesi- 



286 APPENDIX. 

phorus, for whom St. Paul here prayes for mercy, had 
been now dead. Nay 'tis evident, that the mercy for 
which they which are conceived to be in Purgatory 
might be the better, must be bestowed, and conse- 
quently prayed for to befall them, before the day of 
doom, at which time all that are there are supposed to 
be released. But neither is there any evidence of 
Onesiphorus being then dead, nor probability of it 
here. For of this Onesiphorus these two things may be 
observed from hence : first, That his family was now at 
Ephesus, and accordingly he salutes it there, c. iv., 19, 
and consequently that there was his ordinary place of 
abode ; and agreeably it is here said of him, that he 
had relieved Paul when he was at Ephesus, v. 18, and 
that is the reason why in an Epistle to Timothy, residing 
in that city, this mention is made of his family : 
secondly, That he was at this time (when Paul wrote 
this) absent from his home, in all probability at Rome, 
(for tyevofievos must be rendered being, not when he was] 
at least but lately departed, and so still on his way from 
Rome, where Paul was a prisoner, and where Onesi- 
phorus had sought and found him out, v. 17, and with- 
out fear visited and relieved him. And this is a fair 
account, why Paul, writing to Timothy, where his family 
was, mentioned them with so much kindness, but joins 
not him in that remembrance, because he was at 
Pome, from whence, and not at Ephesus, to which he 
wrote. And so all the force of that argument is 
vanished." 



APPENDIX B. 



Bingham, speaking of the prayers usually known in 
the Early Church by the name of Commendations, has 
the following remarks :— 

" One of these forms of prayer, used at funerals, is 
still remaining in the Apostolical Constitutions, which 
I rather choose to repeat here, because it fully shews 
there was no relation to Purgatory in those prayers, but 
quite the contrary, viz., a supposition that the soul of 
the deceased was going to a place of rest and happiness 
in Abraham's bosom. The form runs after this manner. 
First, the deacon says, 'Let us pray for our brethren, 
who are at rest in Christ, that the merciful God, Who 
hath taken the soul of this our brother, would forgive 
him all his sin, voluntary and involuntary ; and of His 
great mercy and good-will place him in the region of 
the just, that are at rest in the bosom of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, with all those who have pleased God, 
and done His will from the beginning of the world, in 
the place whence sorrow, and grief, and mourning, 
are fled away.' After this the Bishop makes 
another prayer in these words : ' Thou immortal and 
everlasting God, from Whom every thing, whether 



288 APPENDIX. 

mortal or immortal, has its being ; Who hast made man 
a rational creature, and inhabitant of the world, mortal 
in his constitution, but promised him a resurrection 
from the dead ; Who didst preserve Enoch and Elias 
from tasting death ; O God of Abraham, God of Isaac, 
and God of Jacob, Who art not the God of the dead, 
but of the living : because the souls of all live to Thee, 
and the spirits of just men are in Thy hand, Whom 
torment cannot touch: look down now on this Thy 
servant, whom Thou hast chosen, and received to 
another state ; pardon him whatsoever he has willingly 
or unwillingly sinned against Thee : grant him favour- 
able angels, and place him in the bosom of patriarchs, 
prophets, apostles, and all those who have pleased Thee 
from the beginning of the world ; where there is no 
sorrow, grief, or trouble, but a place of rest for the 
godly, a land of quietness for the upright, and all those 
who therein see the glory of Thy Christ : by Whom all 
glory, honour, adoration, thanksgiving, and worship, be 
to Thee, through the Holy Ghost, for ever. Amen.' 

" Then the Bishop prays again for the people there 
present : * Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine 
Inheritance, Whom Thou hast purchased with the 
precious blood of Thy Christ ; feed them under Thy 
right hand, protect them under Thy wings, grant that 
they may fight the good fight, and may finish their 
course, and keep the faith immutable, unblameable, unre- 
provable, through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy beloved 
Son : to Whom with Thee and the Holy Spirit be all 
glory, honour, and adoration, world without end. 
Amen.' These prayers for the dead are not made upon 
the Romish supposition of the souls being in purgatory, 



APPENDIX. 289 

or any place of torment, but plainly upon a quite con- 
trary supposition, of their being conducted by the holy 
angels to a place of rest, to the bosom of patriarchs, 
apostles, and prophets, which is an infallible demon- 
stration, that the Church then knew nothing of a 
purgatory fire to torment the dead for many ages after 
death ; but all her prayers went upon another suppo- 
sition, which overthrows the belief of a purgatory fire, 
by placing the souls of the dead in a state of immediate 
rest and happiness." 



A A 



LECTURE XVII. 

ON THE LAST OF THE TWO FINAL PRAYERS. 

W)t (£f)risttan 3fosttrmtton from tf>e Beatf) of Stn unto a 
%\U of HUgJjttousnegs. 

Colossi ans iii. 1, 2, 3. 

« If YE THEN BE RISEN WITH CHRIST, SEEK THOSE 
THINGS WHICH ARE ABOVE, WHERE CHRIST SITTETH ON 
THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD. SET YOUR AFFECTION ON 
THINGS ABOVE, NOT ON THINGS OF THE EARTH. FOR YE 
ARE DEAD, AND YOUR LIFE IS HID WITH CHRIST IN GOD." 

The last Collect in the office for the Burial 
of the Dead may be considered to contain two 
petitions, — the one a prayer for spiritual life 
here ; the other a prayer for life eternal in 
the world to come. 

" merciful Grod, the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, Who is the Eesurrection and the 
Life ; in Whom whosoever believeth shall live, 
though he die, and whosoever liveth and be- 



292 THE CHRISTIAN 

lieveth in Him shall not die eternally ; Who 
also hath taught us by His holy disciple Saint 
Paul, not to be sorry, as men without hope, 
for them that sleep in Him ; we meekly 
beseech Thee, O Father, to raise us from the 
death of sin unto the life of righteousness ; 
that, when we shall depart this life, we may 
rest in Him, as our hope is this our brother 
doth ; and that at the general resurrection in 
the last day we may be found acceptable in 
Thy sight, and. receive that blessing, which 
Thy well-beloved Son shall then pronounce 
to all that love and. fear Thee, saying, Come, 
ye blessed children of my Father, receive the 
kingdom prepared for you from the begin- 
ning of the world. : Grant this, we beseech 
Thee, O merciful Father, through Jesus 
Christ, our Mediator and Eedeemer. Amen." 
It is to the first of these points that I am 
now about to call your attention; the need there 
is, namely, that we should all of us be raised 
from the death of sin (from that corruption 
and. infection of our nature, which, if unsub- 
dued, will, in spite of our privileges, bring 
upon us a sentence of death eternal), unto a 
life of righteousness, — unto a state in which 



RESURRECTION. 293 

the mind of Christ shall be gradually formed 
in us, — in which we shall live more and 
more according to our baptismal "profession, 
which is to follow the example of our Saviour 
Christ, and to be made like unto Him ; that 
as He died and rose again for us, so should 
we who are baptized, die from sin, and rise 
again unto righteousness ; continually morti- 
fying all our evil and corrupt affections, and 
daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness 
of living." 

Such, in her own words, is the doctrine 
of our Church ; and how truly her doctrine is 
that of the Bible, will be seen at once by a 
reference to that passage in S. Paul's Epistle 
to the Colossians, which, as containing some 
of the most important practical inferences 
deducible from the fact of our adorable 
Redeemer's resurrection, has been selected 
for the Epistle of Easter Day, the most joyous 
and awakening of all our festivals. 

In a former chapter of the same Epistle, 
S. Paul had told the Christians of Colossae 
that they had been buried with Christ in 
the waters of Baptism as dead persons, in 
token of their relinquishing the principles 

A a 2 



294 THE CHRISTIAN 

and practices of their former heathenism"; 
and that in Baptism likewise they had 
been raised out of the water with Christ, as 
an emblem and pledge of the resurrection 
with Him unto life eternal. " Ye are com- 
plete," wrote the Apostle, " in Him 

buried with Him in Baptism, wherein also 
ye are risen with Him, through the faith of 
the operation of God, Who hath raised Him 
from the dead." 

Having thus laid down the doctrine, he 
proceeds in the chapter under consideration 
to make a practical application of it, by 
admonishing them that since they had been 
raised with Christ out of the water of 
Baptism, and thereby had professed their 
hope of being raised with Him to an eternal 
life in the body, they were bound to do their 
utmost by faith and holiness, by aiming at 
the spiritual mind, and by mortifying all 
their fleshly appetites and passions, to obtain 
possession of the joys of heaven, where 
Christ now sitteth at the right hand of God, 
vested with full power to bestow those joys 
on all who were capable of receiving them. 1 

i See Macknight in loc. 



RESURRECTION. 295 

Cf If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those 
things which are above,, where Christ sitteth 
on the right hand of God. Set your affec- 
tions on things above, not on things on the 
earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid 
with Christ in God. When Christ, Who is 
our life, shall appear, then shall ye also 
appear with Him in glory. Mortify, there- 
fore, your members which are upon the 
earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate 
affection, evil concupiscence, and covetous- 
ness, which is idolatry; for which things' 
sake the wrath of God cometh on the chil- 
dren of disobedience ; in the which ye also 
walked some time when ye lived in them. 
But now ye also put off all these: anger, 
wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communi- 
cation out of your mouth. Lie not one to 
another, seeing that ye have put off the old 
man with his deeds, and have put on the 
new man, which is renewed in knowledge 
after the image of Him that created him; 
where there is neither Greek nor Jew, cir 
cumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, 
Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all, and 
in all." 



296 THE CHRISTIAN 

I have quoted this passage at length, 
because I am anxious to impress two things 
upon your minds ; first, how great are the 
privileges which Baptism has conferred on 
us ; and, secondly, how great are the obli- 
gations to which, in consequence, we are 
bound. 

It was a risen Saviour Who commanded 
His disciples to go and teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. And 
it is in virtue of that resurrection of His, the 
pledge and guarantee of the acceptance of 
His atonement, that we believe in the 
efficacy of one Baptism for the remission of 
sins. 

By our Baptism we were washed and 
sanctified by the Holy Ghost; we were 
delivered from the wrath of God, and received 
into the ark of Christ's Church; we were 
released from our sins, were born again, and 
made heirs of everlasting salvation. We 
then, as it were, died; were buried; and went 
down into our grave; even as Christ died, 
and was buried, and went down into His. 



RESURRECTION. 297 

And as He rose again from the dead to life 
and glory, so, when we came forth from the 
font, we were endowed with a new and 
spiritual life, and with a new capacity to do 
that which otherwise we could not have done, 
namely, to work out our own salvation. We 
rose with Him; mystically and spiritually, 
indeed, but not the less on that account really 
and truly. And from henceforth we became 
His, "members of His body, of His flesh, 
and of His bones," and bound to surrender 
ourselves unto Him, soul and body, heart 
and mind, life and limb, and to be altogether 
His in all our members, and faculties, and 
appetites. 

But to be all this implies that we have 
kept, and not lost and forfeited by subsequent 
transgression, what Baptism gave us; it 
implies that we have used the instruments 
that Baptism placed in our hands; that, 
when raised up, we have not sunk back 
again into the sleep of death ; that we have 
mastered those lusts of a corrupted nature 
which remain even in them who have been 
made regenerate. In Baptism we rose with 
Christ, were called and admitted into the 



298 THE CHRISTIAN 

true fold, were made God's children by adop- 
tion and grace, — children of His kingdom, if 
so be we maintain our allegiance to Him unto 
the end. But after Christ hath called us to 
Him, we are tried, whether we will come to 
Him and abide with Him or no ; whether we 
will walk worthy of our vocation, and turn 
our privileges to such account as in the end 
to be made meet for a portion in His eternal 
kingdom. " In Baptism," saith the Apostle, 
" ye are risen with Him, through the faith of 
the operation of God, Who hath raised Him 
from the dead." And forthwith he proceeds 
to draw the inference, "If ye then be risen 
with Christ, seek those things which are 
above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand 
of God. Set your affection on things above, 
not on things of the earth." 

He says nothing to lead us to suppose 
that heavenly dispositions will ensue, as a 
matter of course, upon our having risen with 
Christ. On the contrary, he forewarns us 
that, in spite of our mystical resurrection, we 
may die a second death, — that our earthly 
members are still liable to rebel, and if un- 
modified, will lead in us, even as in others 



RESURRECTION. 299 

who have no such privileges, to the com- 
mission of gross transgressions, — u fornica- 
tion, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil 
concupiscence, and covetousness," — " for 
which things' sake," he adds, " the wrath of 
God cometh on the children of disobedience." 
And then he goes on to enumerate other 
vices, " anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, 
filthy communication, lies," against which 
he warns them as being inconsistent with 
their present high and holy calling, " seeing 
that ye have put off the old man with his 
deeds." 

On the whole it appears that we have so 
far risen with Christ, as that we have been 
delivered by our baptism from God's wrath, 
and have been translated into the kingdom of 
His dear Son. But this first resurrection, in 
which, while we were dead in sins, God 
quickened us together with Christ, and raised 
us up together, is but the type of another, in 
which, throughout the whole course of our 
lives, we are to mortify and kill all vices in 
us, and shew ourselves to be " dead indeed 
unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord ;" even, as that other is still 



300 THE CHRISTIAN 

4 

the type of the greatest resurrection of all, 
that, namely, in which " the dead shall be 
raised incorruptible," and in which our Lord 
Jesus Christ " shall change our vile body, 
that it may be like unto His glorious body, 
according to the mighty working, whereby 
He is able to subdue all things unto 
Himself." 

And further, though we be risen with 
Christ, we have no power of ourselves to 
help ourselves, and to keep ourselves in that 
our risen state. Such power comes from 
God alone, from the Eternal and Almighty 
Comforter. It is our privilege, however, as 
baptized Christians, to apply for the assis- 
tance we need, with the assurance that, if 
duly sought, it shall never be sought in vain. 

Therefore it is that the Church, in the 
prayer to which I have already called your 
attention, thus teaches her children to apply 
for the grace which they so much need: "We 
meekly beseech Thee, O Father, to raise us 
from the death of sin, unto the life of righte- 
ousness." How far removed is this from 
the language of presumption ! what a model 
is it of the tone which we ought to assume in 



RESURRECTION. 



301 



all our devotions. There are persons in the 
world who would seem to believe that S. 
Paul's exhortation that we should " come 
boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may 
obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time 
of need," is a warrant and encouragement for 
the adoption of an assured and self-confident 
tone, and a rudeness and familiarity in their 
devotions, as though their admission into the 
Christian covenant gave them licence to be 
bold and irreverent. How different is such 
a spirit from that which the Church would 
have us cultivate ! " We meekly beseech 
Thee." Here is no arrogant, self-satisfied 
approach to the Most High, no stubborn 
murmuring or impatience, but lowliness, 
humility, and submission to His visitation. 
We address Him as our "Father," and in 
that gracious title remind Him of the only 
plea by which we can venture to speak to 
Him at all, even as the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, with Whom He has made us 
joint-heirs. And then what is our petition] 
It is a full and unshrinking acknowledgment 
of our lost and miserable condition, and of 
our entire trust and confidence in His power 

B B 



802 THE CHRISTIAN 

and bounteous compassion to save us from it, 
" We beseech Thee to raise us from the death 
of sin unto the life of righteousness." That 
which we cannot do for ourselves, and which 
none of human kind can do for us, we ask 
Him to effect in our behalf, nothing doubting 
but that what we ask faithfully, we shall 
obtain effectually, to the relief of our neces- 
sities, and to the setting forth of His glory, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

But now, what is it to ask faithfully ! 

It is, of course, to ask in the full belief that 
He to Whom we apply is as able as He is 
willing to hear our cry and to help us : but 
it is more than this, for it will not fail to be 
accompanied on our part by every possible 
demonstration of our zeal and earnestness to 
help ourselves to the best of our ability, and 
to the utmost of our strength. To kneel 
upon our knees in prayer, and to do no 
more, would, in such a case, be a mere 
mockery of God, and evidence of our own 
want of hearty sincerity, and, at any rate, an 
apparent excusing of ourselves from exertion 
upon the plea, that the help of God was as 
much to be looked for as a remedy of our 
indolence, as of our weakness. 



RESURRECTION. 303 

And this the Apostle shews when he points 
out the nature of the sins against which we 
are principally called to hattle. There is 
not one of them of which any man could say 
that he was irresistibly compelled to commit 
it ; and, therefore, there is not one of them 
against which our own stedfast exertions 
must not be brought to bear. For power 
to escape from yielding under temptation, we 
must rely on God's grace only; but for 
prudence to avoid temptations, and for such 
measures of human precaution as seem most 
likely to effect the object we have in view, 
we must rely upon our own foresight and 
earnest-mindedness. 

This is our condition. We have been 
placed in a state of safety, but to maintain it 
requires our own utmost vigilance and con- 
tinual help from on high. We are risen with 
Christ, but in order to ascend where He 
sitteth at the right hand of God, we must 
seek those things which are above, and set 
our affections on them, not on things of the 
earth. And how is this to be effected'? So 
far as we are personally concerned, by the 
mortification of our members which are upon 



304* THE CHRISTIAN 

earth. Body and soul, we are Christ's. He 
created us by His Word, redeemed us with 
His Blood, regenerated us with His Spirit. 
He has bought us with a price, and, there- 
fore, we must glorify Him in our body and 
in our spirit, which are His. And yet our 
hearts are but too well inclined to permit 
Satan to usurp His place in them, Who hath 
made them His temples, and there is scarce 
a member of our body (that body which has 
been hallowed and sanctified by His Sacra- 
ments and indwelling Presence), but may, 
without our most earnest and watchful care, 
prove a rebel and a traitor. 

O how should this thought incite us to 
guard our tongues and eyes, our hands and 
feet, and every member that we have, against 
the sins in w r hich they may bear a share ! 
Shall our tongues be permitted to speak 
words of anger, or malice, or blasphemy, or 
filthy communication % Shall our eyes be 
permitted to look on things which may 
minister to un cleanness, or evil concupis- 
cence, or covetousness 1 Shall our hands be 
permitted to touch, or our feet approach to, 
one forbidden thing % Bather let us remem- 



RESURRECTION. 305 

ber Whose they are now, and to what He has 
destined them hereafter. Shall we permit 
them to be corrupted on earth for whom He, 
by His blood-shedding, hath purchased an 
inheritance in heaven ] Tongues that might 
join the never-ending song of triumph before 
the throne, — eyes that might behold with 
sight unquenched the glories of Him Whom 
no man hath seen or can see, — hands that 
might bear palms in the presence of the 
Lamb that was slain, — feet that might be 
swift to execute His behests, — organs of 
whatever kind they be, shall they be infected 
and polluted with the stain of earthly trans- 
gression, because we are too careless, or too 
faithless, to keep them pure and holy ] 

Our time is short ; death is approaching ; 
the judgment-day is nearer and nearer every 
hour. We look for the resurrection of the 
dead, and the life of the world to come. O 
may we, in reliance on God's preventing 
grace, so strive to purify ourselves from all 
defilements of flesh and spirit, that we may be 
found among those who shall rise to life 
immortal ! 

t; Blessed and holy is- he that hath part in 

b b 2 



306 THE CHRISTIAN RESURRECTION. 

the first resurrection: on such the second 
death hath no power,, but they shall be 
priests of God, and of Christ." 



LECTURE XVIII. 

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS ON THE LAST OF THE TWO 
FINAL PRAYERS. 

®n tf>e Jttutual 3&«ogtutton of tfc SSkasett. 

1 Thessalonians iv. 13, 14. 

" But I would not have you to be ignorant, 
brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that 
ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, 
even so them also which sleep in jesus will god 
BRING WITH Him." 

This passage is the one alluded to in the 
final prayer of the Burial Service, when it is 
said that our Merciful God hath taught us by 
His holy Apostle S. Paul, not to be sorry, as 
men without hope, for them that sleep in 
Him. I propose, on the present occasion, to 
consider the nature of the hope which is thus 



308 ON THE MUTUAL RECOGNITION 

represented as affording comfort in bereave- 
ment, and as alleviating the sorrows of 
separation. 

We read in the Acts of the Apostles, that 
short as was the time during which S. Paul 
was allowed to preach at Thessalonica, he 
diligently maintained the truth of our Blessed 
Lord's resurrection ; and, therefore, it cannot 
be doubted that the great doctrines flowing 
therefrom had become familiar to the Thes- 
salonians. It may fairly be assumed that all 
who embraced the Gospel at all, believed in 
the resurrection of the dead, and the life of 
the world to come ; and, consequently, we 
are led to the inference, that the hope just 
alluded to was not simply and solely that 
which would be derived from a knowledge of 
the immortality of the soul, and of its future 
re-union with the body at the general 
resurrection. 

The remarks, then, of the Apostle, in the 
passage we are considering, had, as it should 
seem, a reference to an expectation, which had 
grown up among the Christians of Thessalo- 
nica, that our Blessed Lord was coming 
shortly to erect a kingdom, of which all 



OF THE BLESSED. 309 

believers should be members, and to a feeling 
of grief and distress to which the Thessalo- 
nians had yielded, as though such of their 
friends as were dead already, would be 
deprived of this privilege. It is with this 
view S. Paul assures them that those who 
sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him, on 
that day when the Lord " shall descend from 
heaven with a shout, with the voice of the 
Archangel, and the trump of God/' — that 
" the dead in Christ shall rise first," and that 
the living shall be " caught up together with 
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the 
air;" to which, as a conclusion of the whole, 
the Apostle adds, " And so shall we be ever 
with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one 
another with these words." 

The ground of "hope" and "comfort," 
therefore, held out to the Thessalonians, was 
this ; not only that the faithful dead should 
rise again, and be made partakers of Christ's 
eternal kingdom, but that such of their pious 
friends as had been separated from them by 
death should be re-united to them, and that 
they should recognize them, and should 
rejoice together in the presence of the Lord. 



310 ON THE MUTUAL RECOGNITION 

And I think it is an evidence that I am not 
attaching to the text a meaning which it will 
not bear, that in an earlier chapter of this 
Epistle, S. Paul expresses the joy and satis- 
faction which the sight of those to whose 
conversion he had been instrumental would 
afford him in the day of final account. " For 
what/' saith he, " is our hope, or joy, or 
crown of rejoicing'? Are not even ye in the 
presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His 
coming 1" When quick and dead were 
standing before the judgment-seat of Christ, 
he would recognize those whom, by his care 
and teaching, he had brought to the know- 
ledge of the truth, and the sight of them 
would give him good hope that on their 
account it should be vouchsafed him to realize 
the blessedness of the promise, that, when 
those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall 
awake, " the wise shall shine as the bright- 
ness of the firmament, and they that turn 
many to righteousness as the stars for ever 
and ever." 

I think, then, we may legitimately infer 
from the teaching of S. Paul, that they who 
have known and loved each other on earth, 



OF THE BLESSED. 311 

will be permitted to recognize,, and still to 
love each other in heaven. 

Now, although a doctrine which is only 
obscurely intimated to us in the Bible, and 
which, so far as I know, is scarcely alluded 
to at all in the teaching of our Church, can 
hardly be spoken of as a very important one, 
still it is one which is so much in harmony 
with our natural feelings, and one which, 
both for good and evil (for it may be turned 
to evil), has so much practical influence on 
many minds, that I think our present course 
of meditation could harldly be brought to 
a satisfactory conclusion without some brief 
discussion of it. I am aware that, in speak- 
ing thus guardedly, I may startle many 
who hear me. There are, no doubt, many 
persons to whom a speedy re-union with those 
they have loved and lost is the one hope and 
prospect which makes life tolerable to them, 
They have received the doctrine into their 
minds from their earliest years ; it has grown 
with their growth, and strengthened with 
their strength ; each successive bereavement 
has served to teach the soothing nature of 
such a belief; as life has gone on, they have 



312 ON THE MUTUAL RECOGNITION 

thought more and more of departed friends as 
the treasure laid up for them in heaven ; and 
they feel that, were that hope taken from 
them, they would find no joy even in heaven 
itself. 

Now, without wishing to inflict unneces- 
sary pain, I must plainly say, that I think 
where this feeling has been carried out to its 
full extent, namely, so as to make re-union 
with our friends, rather than admission into 
the presence of God, the object of our aspira- 
tions for the future, a very sad and deplorable 
state of mind will be the consequence. For, 
in plain words, what is it but encouraging 
ourselves to make something, instead of God, 
the chief object of our regard, and that in 
His very presence'! what is it but an evi- 
dence that we would, if we could, break the 
first and greatest commandment, even before 
His throne'? that we would be idolaters, if 
we had the opportunity, in the midst of the 
courts of heaven ] 

Really, when we consider the extent to 
which many persons appear to keep out of 
sight in their estimate of future bliss that the 
knowledge and vision of God is its chiefest 



OF THE BLESSED. 313 

privilege, and how they allow themselves to 
dwell on their re-union with departed friends 
as the thing in which their happiness will 
consist and to which all else will be subor- 
dinate ; — when passing by, or only giving an 
inferior place to, the though t, that heaven is 
the abode of the Creator, Redeemer, and 
Sanctifier, — one God blessed for ever; — that 
to rest not day nor night in the ceaseless song 
of adoration is the proper work and occupa- 
tion of the redeemed; — that to see and know 
Him as He is, and to know even as they are 
known ; — to be able to comprehend somewhat 
of the depths of His Power, and Wisdom, 
and Mercy, and Love; — to contemplate His 
ineffable Majesty, — and to be themselves 
still advancing onward in knowledge, and 
holiness, and purity, and peace ; — when set- 
ting little or no store by such joys as these, — 
caring little about society with the blessed 
angels, having no longings after full commu- 
nion with the Holy Catholic Church, with 
Saints of all epochs and all climes, they con- 
tract their narrow aspirations to mere hopes 
of reviving again in heaven those social and 
domestic attachments in which they have 

c c 



314 ON THE MUTUAL RECOGNITION 

found their chief solace on earth, we cannot 
wonder that God, Who knoweth the hearts 
of men, and their proneness to rush into 
extremes on slight encouragement, should 
have said but little in His Holy Word on 
the subject of our mutual recognition of each 
other in a future state of being. 

Still, in saying this, I am anxious not to 
be misunderstood. I am not denying that 
the doctrine is to be found in the Bible, nor 
that, in its proper place, our reception of it 
may not tend to make us better and happier 
both here and hereafter. What I would wish 
to guard against, is our giving it a promi- 
nence which the Bible does not give it, and 
thereby being drawn into a sin which would 
be peculiarly offensive in the sight of Him 
Who has emphatically declared Himself to 
be a Jealous God. 

First, I do not deny that the doctrine is to 
be found in the Bible, or, to speak more 
cautiously, that it may be inferred, from a 
careful consideration of passages to be met 
w T ith therein, that there is nothing whatever 
in Scripture which militates against our 
reception of it, and that the little that is said 



OF THE BLESSED. 315 

which is capable of reference to it, turns the 
balance of probability decidedly in its favour. 

The argument deducible from the text has 
been already brought under your considera- 
tion. The object of the Apostle being to 
S( comfort" those who had been separated 
from their friends by death, he sets before 
them the doctrine of the future meeting 
between quick and dead at the Lord's coming, 
in words which would utterly fail to convey 
comfort, unless they conveyed at the same 
time the notion that the persons who so met 
would recognize each other. As well be 
separated for ever, as be in each other's 
presence without mutual recognition. 

The same remark may be applied to the 
well-known words of David when explaining 
the motives of his conduct, and consoling 
himself for the loss of his child : " While 
the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept : 
for I said, who can tell whether God will be 
gracious to me that the child may live'? But 
now he is dead, wherefore should I fast % Can 
I bring him back again % I shall go to him, 
but he shall not return to me." David 
believed that he should go to his child; not 



316 ON THE MUTUAL RECOGNITION 

merely to the same place whither he had been 
removed, hut to the child himself; and his 
consolation was that he should see him, 
know him, and fold him in his arms once 
more. 

Again, the same language which David 
held with respect to his child, S. Paul makes 
use of with reference to his disciples. His 
declaration to the Thessalonians, that they 
would be his " crown of rejoicing in the 
presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His 
coming," you have already heard : a similar 
turn of expression he makes use of in his 
Epistle to the Corinthians, "We are your 
rejoicing, even as ye also are ours in the day 
of the Lord Jesus." To the Philippians he 
speaks of rejoicing on their account "in the 
day of Christ." To the Colossians, writing 
to them of Christ, in them the hope of glory, 
he adds, " Whom we preach, warning every 
man, and teaching every man in all wisdom ; 
that we may present every man perfect in 
Christ Jesus." — Now how could he present 
them, unless he knew them \ and how could 
he rejoice in them, unless he had the means 
certified of their salvation % and whence could 



OF THE BLESSED. 317 

he gain that knowledge, except as a witness 
of their final acceptance 1 

Nor is the language of our Blessed Lord, 
with reference to the events of the judgment- 
day as bearing on this question, less satis- 
factory; for, in His description of the 
particulars of that awful scene, He appears to 
intimate that the righteous shall see and 
recognize those on whom, while in the flesh, 
they bestowed their works of mercy. " Inas- 
much as ye have done it unto one of the least 
of these My brethren, ye have done it unto 
Me." The word "these," as it has been 
well observed, " appears as if it were intended 
to convey the understanding, that they who 
had called forth the exercise of Christian 
benevolence, should be presented immediately 
to the eyes of those, by whom that benevo- 
lence had been exercised towards them." 1 

Further, though perhaps we ought not to 
stretch the language of a parable beyond its 
immediate object, it is impossible to read 
that of the rich man and Lazarus, without 
coming to the conclusion both that those 
who have entered the unseen world will 

1 See Bp. Mant on the Happiness of the Blessed, p. 82. 

c c 2 



318 ON THE MUTUAL RECOGNITION 

recognize those whom they have known on 
earth, and that they will carry with them 
into that world the feelings and affections 
which they had in this. 

Lastly, since while on earth it has been 
one of our greatest privileges to consider 
ourselves as " members one of another," and 
since God is not the God of the dead but of 
the living, and both dead and living form one 
Church, we may fairly conclude that the 
society, as a society, will be in its most 
perfect state in heaven, and that the spirits 
of just men made perfect shall then be linked 
together in those indissoluble fronds of regard, 
and brotherly affection, which in this life, 
through manifold imperfections, was impos- 
sible. 

On the whole, viewing these several 
passages of Scripture (and others to like pur- 
port might be adduced), we may surely say 
that, although no one of them distinctly 
declares that we shall recognize each other 
hereafter, yet, taken collectively, they -do 
render it highly probable that such will be 
the case, and that the general persuasion 
among Christians to that effect has not been 
taken up on unwarrantable grounds. 



OF THE BLESSED. 319 

It is true that S. Paul tells us that at 
the general resurrection "we shall all be 
changed," but it seems evident, from the 
language of the context, that the change 
there spoken of is that from corruption to 
incorruption, from mortality to immortality, 
and does not refer to any loss of personal 
identity, or self-consciousness on our own 
part, or to anything which may prevent our 
being known by others. As our Blessed 
Lord, when He was transfigured, was still 
known to His disciples, in spite of the 
change which came upon Him, and the 
blaze of glory which blinded them so, when 
He shall " change our vile bodies, that they 
may be fashioned like unto His glorious 
Body," it is reasonable to expect that they 
will still so far preserve the lineaments of 
what they were, as to be recognizable by 
those upon whom a similar change has 
passed. 

It is true, again, that our Saviour, speaking 
of the state of the redeemed in heaven, hath 
said that, " when they shall rise from the 
dead," " they which shall be accounted 
worthy to obtain that world," shall " neither 



320 ON THE MUTUAL RECOGNITION 

marry, nor be given in marriage/' but shall 
be "as the angels which are in heaven." 
But this is only saying, that the chief cause 
for which matrimony was ordained, will no 
longer exist; and, therefore, that the ties 
which bind in heaven those who have been 
bound together on earth will be fraternal, 
not conjugal ; different in kind, as befitteth 
those whose fleshly appetites have been 
turned into spiritual affections, but not less 
intense in degree: husband and wife may 
love each other still, but it will be with the 
love wherewith angels love one another. As 
one of the Fathers saith, " In this life that 
we may die, therefore are we born ; and we 
marry to the end that that which death con- 
sumes, birth may replenish ; therefore, where 
the law of death is taken away, the cause of 
birth is taken away likewise .... In the 
resurrection, men shall be as the angels of 
God, that is, no man there dies, no one is 
born, no infant, no old man." 

So far, then, as Scripture speaks at all, it 
gives no intimations which militate against 
the probability of our mutual recognition of 
each other hereafter, or which would tend to 



OF THE BLESSED. 821 

make us believe that such a state of things 
would be incompatible with God's designs 
for us, or the discharge of our duties to Him 
in another state of existence; and if the 
silence, or rather reserve, which has been 
exercised on the subject is a difficulty to us, 
a solution of that difficulty may be found in 
a recollection of the danger to which., even 
now, we are exposed, that, namely, of 
thinking more of the creature than of the 
Creator, and of desiring to reach heaven 
more because we there expect to find a 
treasure we have lost, than because it is the 
abode of God and of His Christ. 

There are some difficulties connected with 
the subject we have been considering which 
suggest themselves not on Scriptural, but 
on other grounds. To these, however, with 
one exception, I do not think it necessary to 
allude, seeing that they are altogether of a 
speculative and unprofitable character. 

But with reference to the objection which 
has been sometimes made to the probability 
of our future recognition of each other, on 
the score that such recognition would be 
incompatible with a state of perfect hap- 



322 ON THE MUTUAL RECOGNITION 

piness, since our own lot, and that of some 
whom we have loved, may be cast in different 
worlds, and the thoughts of distress from their 
misery would interfere with the joys of 
heaven, — it may be observed, first, that the 
Saints in bliss can will nothing but what 
God wills ; their love for righteousness will 
have subdued all other love : — to be over- 
whelmed, therefore, by any excess of sorrow 
because " God will by no means spare the 
guilty," would indicate a repining spirit, and 
a degree of imperfection irreconcilable with 
the condition of an inhabitant of heaven. 
And, secondly, that there seems no reason 
why there may not be a holy sorrow felt 
even in heaven for things that deserve sorrow; 
but all bitterness of sorrow will be lost in 
adoring love and gratitude. 

These, however, and such like matters, we 
may safely leave in faith to the disposal of an 
all-merciful God. Nevertheless, reflection on 
them will not be unpractical and without its 
profit, if it lead us to love one another, to be 
forbearing with one another, to be honest 
with one another, to lay open our hearts to 
one another, — to pray for one another, — to 



OF THE BLESSED. 323 

intercede for one another, — to live as mem- 
bers of the Holy Catholic Church, — to live 
as those who know that a day is coming in 
which all the thoughts of our hearts will be 
revealed, — to pass the time of our sojourning 
together now as those who desire to be 
eompanions throughout the endless ages of 
eternity. 

But above all, it will not be unprofitable 
to us, if it lead us to the conviction that our 
first and chiefest duty is to love God, to seek 
His favour, and to desire to be united to 
Him, to feel that it would be the worst of all 
evils to be separated from Him, to aspire 
after heaven as being the place where He for 
ever dwells, and to count all things subordi- 
nate to this, that we may win Christ, and be 
found in Him, on that day when He maketh 
up His jewels ! 



LECTURE XIX. 

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS ON THE LAST OF THE TWO 
FINAL PRAYERS. 

Wfyt 3foj)S of l^ab^n. 

Matthew xxv. 34. 

"Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the 
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation 
of the world." 

The final prayer in the Burial Service con- 
cludes with the petition that God would be 
pleased to grant that the congregation then 
assembled may be found acceptable in His 
sight at the resurrection in the last day, and 
receive t; that blessing" which the well- 
beloved Son shall then pronounce to all that 
love and fear Him. The blessing alluded to 
is that contained in the text, and, as our 

D D 



326 THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

Adorable Lord has made known to us in His 
prophetic description of the last day, is the 
form of words in which He will decree His 
sentence of merciful acceptance in favour of 
those whom He has already placed upon His 
right hand, and whom, as having shewn acts 
of mercy to His little ones, He will recognize 
as having shewn them to Himself. " Come, 
ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom 
prepared for you from the foundation of the 
world : for I was an hungred, and ye gave 
Me meat: thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: 
I was a stranger, and ye took Me in : naked, 
and ye clothed Me : I was sick, and ye 
visited Me: I was in prison, and ye came 
unto Me." 

Let us now proceed to consider (according 
to the little that has been revealed to us, and 
the narrowness of our limited capacities, — 
that is to say, with all possible diffidence and 
reverence) the nature of that heavenly inheri- 
tance which shall be the future portion of the 
blessed. 

And first let us, whom God has called to 
be Saints, who have been placed in the way 
of salvation, received into the bosom of His 



THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 327 

Church, made His children by adoption and 
grace, and who have thereby been rendered 
capable of admission into His kingdom in 
heaven, — let us offer unto Him the tribute of 
our fervent gratitude, that whereas the ever- 
lasting fire which will be the portion of the 
cursed hereafter is not said to have been 
prepared for them, but " for the devil and 
his angels," the inheritance of bliss into 
which the righteous shall be received, is 
declared to have been prepared for them, 
and, as S. Peter expresses it, fi reserved" for 
them, " from the foundation of the world." 

It is altogether useless for us to attempt to 
inquire wherein such a preparation consisted, 
because no revelation has been made to us on 
the subject. It would be, indeed, sufficient 
to understand of the expression that it bore 
reference to the foreknowledge of God, " with 
Whom things to come are as already done," 1 
and, therefore, that it is unnecessary to in- 
terpret it literally, but rather to receive it as 
a gracious expression of the merciful intention 
of the Most High, determined from the 
foundation of the world, to bring His elect 

1 S, Chrysostom, quoted in the Catena Aurea, in Matt. p. 863. 



328 THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

near to Himself: but when we reflect on the 
parting promise of the Son of God to the 
disciples, it seems difficult not to suppose 
that the same Infinite Mercy which had so 
admirably adapted the world in which we live 
to the wants of its inhabitants, which, having 
decked this fair and fruitful earth with all 
that is pleasant to the senses, — having hung 
the sun in the firmament to give us light by 
day, and spangled the deep blue sky with stars 
to remind us of His Presence and Power by 
night, — having planted the endless variety of 
tree and flower, and poured forth the glad 
waters of the gushing fountains to irrigate 
and fertilize the soil, — having filled air and 
earth, rivers and seas, with multiplied 
forms of life, allotting to each its appointed 
place, and rendering each subservient to the 
use or gratification of man, — I say, it seems 
difficult not to suppose that Almighty God, 
Who only rested from the work of creation 
when He had beheld everything that He 
had made, and had pronounced that "it was 
very good," should not have provided actually 
and literally a yet more glorious abode for 
the dwelling-place of His redeemed, in a 



THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 329 

world which sin shall never enter, and which 
Satan shall never pollute with his accursed 
presence. For what said the Lord Himself? 
"In My Father's house are many mansions," — 
those mansions, doubtless, which had been 
set apart by God from the foundation of the 
world for the reception of His Own elect, and 
which, by the time of their coming, would 
be ready for them, — " In My Father's house 
are many mansions : if it were not so I 
would have told you. I go to prepare a 
place for you. And if I go and prepare a 
place for you, I will come again, and receive 
you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye 
may be also." 

Of the nature and occupations of that 
blessed place the youngest child among us, 
who can read his Bible, knows as much as 
the aged saint. Priest and people here 
stand on the same footing. I can tell you 
nothing which you do not know already. 
What is beyond your comprehension is 
equally beyond mine. We can only receive 
what has been revealed in simple faith, and 
bless God, Who, for His dear Son's sake, 
has promised to His faithful servants such 

d d 2 



330 THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

good things as pass man's understanding, — 
things so good that nothing we have ever 
yet experienced can give us a conception of 
them. We can only read, and then wonder, 
and then adore. 

True, S. Paul tells us that God has 
revealed unto us by His Spirit those things, 
prepared for them that love Him, which 
hitherto neither eye had seen, nor ear heard, 
neither had entered into the heart of man. 
But this we receive as an intimation, not of 
our ability in our present state of being to 
comprehend the ineffable glories of heaven, 
but that, under the Gospel, things are made 
known which the mind of man, untaught and 
unassisted, could not only have never ascer- 
tained for himself, but could never, in his 
furthest stretch of imagination, have con- 
ceived. 

It was then revealed by the Spirit how, 
through the death and resurrection of the 
Eternal Son, the kingdom of heaven should 
be open to all believers, and how the grave 
and gate of death should become the portal 
of a blessed immortality. But even the Spirit 
" which searcheth all things, yea, the deep 



THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 331 

things of God," could not enable flesh and 
blood to realize to itself the fulness of 
heavenly joy, or teach corruption to under- 
stand the things of incorruption. 

Yet such light and knowledge as are good 
for us have not been withheld ; " the shadow 
of heavenly things," 1 their " pattern" and 
similitude, have been shewn us ; and the map 
of the heavenly Canaan has, as it were, been 
laid before us, though as yet we are too 
feeble to ascend to the top of Pisgah, and our 
eyes too weak to bear the dazzling vision of 
its radiant valleys and glittering streams. 
Let us be thankful for what we have. Some- 
what now ; more hereafter. Not all we 
could desire, but still enough to make our 
hearts bound with joy, to fill them with the 
deepest love, to awe them into the most pro- 
found reverence, and to kindle in them most 
ardent longings after those things which 
now can only be seen through a glass darkly, 
but which, by and by, shall be known fully, 
and shall satisfy our souls for ever. 

The presence of Him Who is King of 
Kings, and Lord of Lords, the Creator, 

1 Heb. viii. 5. 



SS2 THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

Redeemer, and Sanctifier; His dwelling in 
the light which no man can approach unto ; 
the ineffable glory of that abode ; its abyss 
of tranquillity and peace ; its purity ; its 
solemnity ; its majesty ; its holy joy. The 
beings that throng its immeasurable realms, 
their number and nature, obedience and 
order, — Angels and Archangels, Cherubim 
and Seraphim, Thrones and Dominions, Prin- 
cipalities and Powers ; all bright with the 
brightness of a sinless immortality, all actu- 
ated by one feeling, — love; and by one will, — 
obedience; the occupations in which they 
are engaged whose home and haven are there; 
their ceaseless, unwearied acts of adoration, 
their bursts of thanksgiving and jubilant 
exultation, their thrilling songs of joy; the 
eternal chant rising up like incense for ever 
and ever; the sense of security, of fruition, 
of still-growing light and knowledge; the 
beatific rest, unbroken by the dread of further 
temptation or trial, by apprehension of im- 
pending anxieties and bereavements, and in 
which God shall wipe away the tears from all 
eyes; and there shall be no more death, 
neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there 



THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 3SS 

be any more pain. These are some of the 
things which the Word of God points out 
as forming ingredients in the bliss of the 
redeemed ; but the greater part of the revela- 
tions on this subject rather excite curiosity, 
than gratify it ; much of what we know is 
gathered from incidental expressions, or by a 
comparison of one part of Scripture with 
another. And in those passages wherein the 
fullest account of the kingdom of heaven has 
been revealed to us, we are the soonest be- 
wildered, and, like the Apostles in the Mount 
of Transfiguration, find ourselves so awe- 
struck, as to be incompetent to clothe our 
thoughts in words. We all remember that 
when Moses, — he who had been already a 
spectator of the innermost terrors of Sinai, — 
made that wondrous petition, " I beseech 
Thee, shew me Thy glory," the request was 
only granted in part. " Thou canst not see 
My face," said the Lord God of Israel ; " for 
there shall no man see Me, and live." And 
so the Almighty hid him in the cleft of a 
rock, and covered him with His hand as He 
passed by, lest His servant, looking on Him, 
should have been consumed. 



334 THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

As it was with Moses in Horeb, so is it 
with us when we would gaze upon the glories 
of Heaven. Somewhat is conceded for our 
encouragement, the rest is kept back as 
altogether unfitted for us, — too holy, too 
bright, too deep, too awful. 

The rule of God's revelations towards us 
seems to be this : Nothing is made known 
to our faith, which has not a direct tendency 
to affect our practice. All which does not 
bear upon that, is, for the present, no concern 
of our's. " The secret things belong unto 
the Lord our God ; but those things which 
are revealed belong unto us, and to our 
children, for ever, that we may do all the 
words of this law." So with the doctrine 
before us. All these things which are most 
powerful to excite us to exertion, lest we 
should miss attaining a place in heaven, are 
brought prominently forward ; and even 
where reserve is used, it seems to be with 
the object of stimulating us to an increased 
desire after greater knowledge, and of sug- 
gesting to us the reflection that, if what is 
only partially revealed conveys such exalted 
notions of the bliss of the redeemed, the 



THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 3S5 

actual participation therein must be some- 
thing beyond all thought and conception of 
happiness. But, on the other hand, nothing 
is made known to us which would be a mere 
unprofitable and unpractical gratification of 
our curiosity. 

As a practical matter, therefore, let us 
approach this wonderful revelation, that a 
kingdom has been prepared, from the foun- 
dation of the world, for God's elect ; and 
while we scrupulously avoid all irreverent 
speculation and rash intrusion into things 
which have not been revealed, let us endeavour 
to make the most of those which have. 

And, among these, let us give a prominent 
place to one, which, when rightly received 
and acted upon, may have a most beneficial 
tendency, in urging us forward to increased 
aspirations and exertions after perfection. 
The doctrine to which I allude is that which 
is not obscurely intimated by S. Paul, when 
he says, that as " one star differeth from 
another star in glory, so also is the resur- 
rection of the dead," 1 — the doctrine, namely, 

1 "Quomodo multae mansiones apud Patrem, si non pro 
varietate meritorum ? quomodo stella a Stella, distabit, nisi pro 
diversitate radiorum." — Tertullian. 



386 THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

that there are different degrees of bliss in 
heaven, which will be allotted to the 
redeemed hereafter, in proportion to the 
amount of their faith and obedience here ; or 
as Bishop Bull expresses it, that " the more we 
abound in grace and good works here, the 
more abundant shall our reward be here- 
after." l 

If ever one of Adam's fallen race sets foot 
in heaven, it will be by the sole mercy and 
favour of God, done for the sake of His Only- 
begotten Son. It will be a free gift, — no 
merited or purchased inheritance of our own. 
If we had done all that God had commanded 
us, we should have done no more than it was 
our duty to do ; yea, if all our days had 
been spent in a life-long course of holiness, 
there could be no inherent connexion or 
proportion of reward between the limited 
services of time, and the boundless glories of 
eternity. 

Heaven, however, being once opened to 
us, as God's free gift for Christ's sake, it 
does become conceivable that our situation 

i See Bp. Bull's Serm : On the different degrees of Bliss in 
Heaven. 



THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 337 

there may be fixed by the character and 
extent of our obedience here upon earth, and 
there are many passages of Scripture from 
which such a conclusion may be drawn. 

For instance, our Saviour's reply to S. 
Peter's inquiry, as to what reward he and 
his companions should receive, who had 
given up their all in this world to follow Him, 
was, rt Verily I say unto you, that ye which 
have followed me, in the regeneration, 1 when 
the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of 
His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve 
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." 
Now to what extent soever these words may 
be metaphorical, this they must imply, that 
the Apostles should have a pre-eminence of 
glory over others who were equally in heaven 
with themselves. 

Again, in a passage shortly following that 
which I have just quoted, we read that the 
mother of S. James and S. John came to 
Christ with the petition, " Grant that these 
my two sons may sit, the one on Thy right 

1 i. e. In the Resurrection, — "a regeneration, or second 
generation, of men to life, after that life which they had in 
their first generation was extinguished.'' — Bp. Bull. 

E E 



338 THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

hand, and the other on the left in Thy king* 
dom." " To sit on My right hand, and on 
My left," was our Lord's reply, "is not 
Mine to give, hut" (except, that is,) " to them 
for whom it is prepared of My Father." He 
does not deny that there shall be a right 
hand and a left hand place as seats of dignity, 
that some shall be greater and some less, 
but only refers the disposal of them all to His 
Father. 

The like doctrine is deducible from the 
very scope of the parable of the ten ser- 
vants, whose reward was proportioned to the 
improvements they had made of the sum 
committed to their trust. 

To the same sense and purpose is usually 
expounded a text to which I have already 
alluded : " In My Father's house are many 
mansions." The multitude of mansions in 
heaven seem hardly intelligible without 
admitting a difference of degrees of glory; 
for if all the saints should be placed in one 
and the same degree of bliss, they would 
occupy one and the same mansion. 

Again, if, as we know from what is said 
on the subject of " few" and " many stripes 



7 



THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 339 

there will be a distinction in the punish- 
ments of hell, it seems reasonable to suppose 
that a like distinction will prevail among the 
joys of heaven. 

Again, if the redeemed are to be " as the 
angels of God in heaven," the similitude 
appears to imply different degrees of rank 
among the spirits of just men made perfect, 
even as we know that there are such among 
the angelic hosts. 

So, lastly (for it is unnecessary to multiply 
instances), if "as one star differeth from 
another star in glory, so also is the resurrec- 
tion of the dead," the inference must surely 
be, that as among the heavenly lights some 
are more glorious than others, some of a 
greater, and some of a lesser magnitude, so 
in the resurrection, not only shall the glori- 
fied bodies of the saints differ from the corrup- 
tible bodies they had here, but also among 
these glorified bodies themselves there shall 
be degrees of glory. 

Thus, then, on the whole, we conclude, 
that though eternity will present but two 
states in which the souls of men will be 
found, — endless joy, or endless misery, — 



340 THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

there will be a proportion observed in the 
allotted measure of each.i 

But heaven will still be heaven, and hell 
still hell, though in each there be many 
mansions. 

The penitent transgressor, he who has 
fallen from his baptismal purity, and at 
length, after hard struggles and bitter tears, 
has won his way back again to God's favour, 
will, through his Saviour's merits, be ad- 
mitted to a share of bliss, pure, and change- 
less, and eternal, surpassing all that eye hath 
seen, or ear heard, or heart conceived of 
happiness and glory. There will be joy in 

* " 'E«<r< 7«p irapa Kvpico Kal fita&ol Kal juovat irXeioves Kclt avaKofiav 8ia>v. 

Clem. Alex. Strom, iv. cap. vi., §. 36, or p. 579. edit. Potter. 
(Quoted by Bp. Bull.) On this question nothing can be 
better than the remarks of S. Augustine, Tract. LXVI1. in 
Johann. Evang. — "Multse mansiones, diversas meritorum in 
una vita eterna significant dignitates. Alia est enim gloria 
solis, alia gloria lunse, alia gloria stellarum : stella enim ab 
stella. difTert in gloria, sic et resurrectio mortuorum. Tanquam 
stellse, sancti diversas mansiones diversse claritates sortiuntur 
in regno ; sed propter unum denarium (Matt. xx. 9.) nullus 
separatur a regno : atque ita Deus erit omnia in omnibus, ut, 
quoniam Deus Caritas est, per caritatem fiat ut quod habent 
singuli commune sit omnibus. Sic enim quisque etiam ipse 
habet, cum amat in altero quod ipse non habet. Non erit itaque 
aliqua invidia imparis claritatis, quoniam regnabit in omnibus 
unitas charitatis." 



THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 341 

heaven at his admission, as for the return of 
the contrite prodigal, as for one who was 
dead and is alive again, and was lost and is 
found. 

But for the faithful servant of God, who 
has never left his father's house, who has sted- 
fastly endeavoured to keep his Baptismal vows,, 
and passed his earthly pilgrimage in daily 
exertions after perfection, — for him, in the 
same heaven, there may be a brighter robe, 
a fairer crown, a nearer approach to the 
eternal throne ; and when, through his Sa- 
viour's merits, he may be welcomed into the 
joy of his Lord, that welcome may be spoken 
in words of the most surpassing favour, 
" Son, thou art ever with Me, and all that I 
have is thine /" 

What a reflection is this, brethren, for 
those who are battling with the trials of this 
miserable world! What an encouragement 
to persevere ! What an inducement to run 
with patience the race that is set before us, 
to covet earnestly the best gifts, to keep up 
a good heart, and to go on unto perfection ! 

May God mercifully write it in your hearts, 
and keep it there till that day when Christ 

E E 2 



342 THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

will receive you unto Himself, and your 
hearts shall rejoice, with a joy that no man 
shall take from you ! 



LECTURE XX. 



THE BLESSING. 



Wi)t Apostolical IBenetrtctton consto'ereo' tottfj reference to 
ti)e burial ©ffice. 

2 Corinthians xiii. 14. 

"The grace of our, Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
love of God, and the communion of the Holy 
Ghost, be with you all. Amen." 

We can have no surer test of the growth of 
irreligion among us, of our increasing indif- 
ference to holy things, and of the extent to 
which we have sunk below the measure of 
our fathers' reverence and devotion,, than by 
contrasting their ordinary habits of life with 
our own. 

Time was, (and that not so very long since) 
when children were wont to ask their parents' 
blessing, 1 to kneel to receive it, and to believe 

1 See Preface to Bp. Sanderson's Sermons, p. 73, Edit. 1686. 



344 THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 

that it had virtue to confer benefits upon 
them. 

We think scorn of such a practice, and 
the consequence is, that perhaps, since the 
world was called Christian, there has never 
been a nation in which filial disobedience is 
made of less account, in which age is treated 
with less respect, in which honour is less 
given where honour is due. But this is not 
the worst. Unbelief and indifference in one 
case have led to it in another. The rule, long 
since laid down by the Apostle, has been 
abundantly verified, "He that loveth not 
his brother whom he hath seen, how can he 
love God Whom he hath not seen]" The 
greater exertion of faith has proved altogether 
impossible to those who have found a cause 
of offence in the lesser. They who have set 
no store on, and have come to despise, the 
parental blessing, — that blessing which, in 
many respects, carries its fulfilment with 
it, — have at length received the benediction of 
the Church with apathy, have looked on it 
as a mere form, the prescribed manner of 
concluding her offices, and so far appropriate 
and in harmony with their feelings, — but in 



THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 345 

itself a thing altogether without life, or value, 
of whose presence they are hardly sensible, 
and whose loss, if altogether withdrawn, 
would not fill them with any strong emotions 
of grief. 

And, no doubt, to such persons, the bene- 
diction of the Church is a thing wholly 
unprofitable. It is a thing which is living or 
dead according to the disposition of those 
who receive it. There are seeds which were 
never intended by nature to take root in the 
earth, and, therefore, though you should cast 
them into the richest soil, they will not grow ; 
and for this simple reason, that they are 
destined to extract the nourishment which 
supports life, from contact with, and adhesion 
to, the boughs of some living tree, to find, if 
I may so say, their food already prepared for 
them, and the sap already secreted which 
will enable them to branch forth and 
flourish. 

So is it with the benediction of the Church. 
The priest, as the ambassador of Grod, dis- 
penses it, by the authority of God, to all 
who profess the faith, but its beneficial 
effects depend wholly upon the state of the 



346 THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 

recipient. There are cases in which, like 
the seed just spoken of, it will never shew a 
sign of life, and, as even that seed would not 
grow on a dead and sapless branch, but 
requires a principle of vitality to meet its 
own, so must the blessing of the Church 
fall on a heart which believes in its power, 
and is eager to receive it, before it will mani- 
fest any token of its own dormant life and 
vigour. To the living, it will be living ; to 
the dead, it will be only dead. To those 
who believe it to be more than a form, it 
will prove, beyond all fear of mistake, its 
energy and power. To those who look on 
it as a form only, it will be nothing more. 
The Apostles of old time were enjoined to 
enter every house with a salutation of peace ; 
and according to the indwellers' faith was it 
unto them. If the house was worthy, the 
peace of God came upon it; if it was not 
worthy, the blessing invoked by the mouth 
of the Apostles reverted to them again. And 
so now. The priest pronounces the bene- 
diction of the Church ; but it depends upon 
the disposition of those on whom it falls, 
whether the word which proceedeth out of 



THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 347 

his mouth returns unto him void, or whether 
it accomplishes that to which it was destined, 
and prospers in the person whereto it was 
sent. 

But this is not all ; for since it is evident 
that God's offers cannot be rejected without 
grievously offending Him, it is also evident 
likewise that if the blessing of the Church 
fails to convey a benefit to us, it will certainly 
be a witness against us. 

Now, considering that there is not one of 
the offices of the Church which does not 
contain a form of benediction/ it behoves us 
to reflect very seriously with ourselves what 
the feeling is with which we receive it. If 
we are not the better for it, we are the 
worse. 

In addressing myself to Churchmen, I 
have a right to assume that I am speaking to 
those who look on the benediction of the 
Church as something more than a prayer, 
and^ who believe that the priesthood, as 
holding their orders through the Apostolic 

1 The apparent exceptions strengthen the rule, because the 
Office of Baptism, for instance, is never (or at least never ought 
to be) separated from a service which concludes with a blessing. 



348 THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 

succession, have the same authority as the 
Apostles themselves to pronounce the bene- 
diction. Further, I am speaking to those 
who believe that there is no ground whatever 
for supposing that the blessings contained in 
the benediction of the Church can be con- 
veyed or continued to us through any other 
channel than God's appointed ministers in 
the Church's solemn ministrations. I would 
entreat you, therefore, to put the question to 
your consciences, how far you really value 
the blessing of the Church, how far your 
frequent participation of such an inestimable 
privilege has deadened your sense of its 
awfulness, and of the peril to your soul, if, 
haply, that peace and reconciliation which 
was offered you should, through your indif- 
ference to its worth, return back to him who 
is commissioned to dispense it to you. 

And now to apply these remarks more 
particularly to that form of benediction which 
the Church has prescribed to be used at the 
close of the Office for the Burial of the 
Dead, as well as at the end of the Litany, 
and of Morning and Evening Prayer " daily 
throughout the year," and which, conse- 



THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 349 

quently, is more frequently used than any 
other of her similar forms. 

" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
the love of God, and the communion of the 
Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen." 

It was the habit of S. Paul to conclude 
each of his Epistles with a blessing on the 
people or individual to whom he was writing. 
And whereas, generally speaking, the body 
of each Epistle was written by some disciple 
who acted as his secretary or amanuensis, 
the benediction was invariably written in his 
own hand, 1 an evidence at once of the genuine- 
ness and authenticity of the former portion 
of the letter, and of the Apostle's feeling 
that his words of blessing were no mere 
wish, such as might be uttered by any man, 
but that he had been vested with authority 
to convey, to those who were fitted by their 
holiness of disposition to receive them, the 
gifts which he invoked. 

Of all these benedictions, that which ends 
the second Epistle to the Corinthians is the 
fullest ; for whereas the others are confined 

1 See Romans xvi. 22, and compare with 1 Corinthians xvi. 
21, 23 ; and 2 Thessalonians iii.,17, 18. 

F F 



350 THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION". 

to a single clause, such as " Grace be with 
you,," this is expanded into a three-fold 
sentence, with each member of which the 
name of one Person of the Ever-blessed 
Trinity is connected, as the Giver of some 
good and perfect gift. — " The love of 
God," — that love of the Eternal Father 
whereby He made us, preserveth us, and 
poureth His daily benefits upon us ; whereby 
He causeth all things to work together for 
good to them that love Him ; that love of 
which the chastenings and heavenly correction 
which He sends His children are the proof; 
that love which, in conjunction with His 
other attributes, His Power, His Truth, His 
Purity, His Justice, devised the means of 
man's salvation. — "The grace of our Lord 
Jesus Christ," — the favour, and help, and 
protection of Him Who, being the Bright- 
ness of His Father's glory, and the express 
Image of His Person, did not disdain to look 
with an eye of compassion upon us miserable 
sinners, who lay in darkness and the shadow 
of death ; Who left the glories of heaven, and 
the adorations of angels, to take upon Him a 
mortal body, and to converse with men; 



THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 351 

Who, being God before all eternities, was 
yet made man ; begotten before all times, yet 
born in time; baptized as a man, yet the 
Forgiver of sins as God ; tempted as a man, 
yet overcoming as God: weary, but pro- 
mising rest to all the heavy-laden that come 
unto Him ; Himself praying, yet able to hear 
and grant our prayers ; a man of sorrows, 
yet wiping the tears from off all faces ; sold 
for thirty pieces of silver, yet redeeming the 
world with an inestimable price ; led as a 
sheep to the slaughter, yet Himself the great 
Shepherd that feedeth the Israel of God ; 
beaten and wounded, yet curing all our 
weakness, and healing all our sickness ; Who 
died, and was buried, and descended into 
hell, but rose again triumphant over death 
and the grave, depriving the one of its sting 
and the other of victory, and making both the 
threshold of a blessed immortality to all that 
believe in and obey Him; Who ascended 
into heaven, where He sitteth on the right 
hand of the Highest Majesty, to plead and 
intercede for His people, and to be with His 
Church till, as the Judge of quick and dead, 
He shall return to take His own unto Him- 



352 THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 

self, and to give them their portion among 
the many mansions of His Father's House. 1 — 
" The fellowship of the Holy Ghost," — union 
and communion with the ever-blessed Com- 
forter ; in and through Him union and com- 
munion with each other; joint fruition and 
participation of His gifts and graces; Who 
has knit together the elect in one communion 
and fellowship in the mystical body of the 
Eternal Son; an ever-present sense of His 
preventing and co-operating aid ; of His 
abiding influence guiding us into all truth, 
and strengthening us in all righteousness, 
and enabling us to struggle manfully our- 
selves, and to aid our brethren in their 
struggle with our spiritual enemies, and, in 
the end, to gain the mastery over the devil, 
the world, and the flesh. 

These are some of the things invoked 
upon us in the benediction of the Church; 
yea rather, they are things which, according 
to the pleasure of God, and in measure pro- 
portioned to our necessities and earnestness 
in desiring them, are actually consigned to 
us through her instrumentality, if so be we 
are worthy recipients of the benefits offered. 

1 See Field on the Church, Book i. ch. 4. 



THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 353 

And they are not benefits which are short- 
lived, transient, or destined to perish in the 
using: the Church invokes them upon us 
"for evermore." They may be ours for 
ever, — if we will; ours, not only for our 
support and comfort amid all the changes 
and chances of this mortal life; ours, not 
only as we pass through the dreary valley of 
the shadow of death ; ours, not only as we 
rest from our labours in the unseen world, — 
though this were an amount of good vouch- 
safed to us, above all that tongue could tell, 
or heart conceive; but ours through the 
never-dying years of an eternity, immea- 
surable, illimitable, infinite ; ours when we 
shall be equal to the angels in the fruition of 
the Godhead. 

But if such be the force of that bene- 
diction which the Church bestows upon her 
mourning children, ere yet she permits them 
to quit the grave wherein they have left their 
dead, and ere yet she sends them back to the 
world, to engage once more in its weary toil, 
and meet their further trials, and discharge 
their daily duties, and bear their daily cross ; 
if such be the alleviations which, through 

f f 2 



354 THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 

God's great mercy, she is permitted to 
provide for us in sorrow, well may we feel 
that death has no sting for them that are in 
Christ Jesus ; that to stand by a grave's side 
is not the saddest of our trials ; yea, rather 
that it is good for us to be there ; and that 
even in this world the promise is fulfilled, 
" Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall 
be comforted ;" and deeply and earnestly, 
with all our heart, and all our soul, may we 
join in that " Amen" with which the bene- 
diction is concluded. 

We have now gone step by step through 
the Office for the Burial of the Dead; we 
have examined each portion of the service at 
length, — have marked its calming, soothing 
tone, and its wonderful adaptation to all the 
wants and woes of the mourner. We have 
seen how gently, with guiding hand, the 
Church leads him forward, and encourages 
him to exercise the graces of faith, and 
patience, and thankfulness ; how she endea- 
vours to raise and elevate him, and carry 
him beyond this visible scene by meditations 
on mortality,- — his own mortality, as well as 



THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 355 

that of others ; how she informs his under- 
standing as to the certainty and manner of 
the resurrection; how she cheers him with 
the consolations which flow from that doc- 
trine; how she points out the joys of the 
redeemed in heaven; how she brings him 
on from resignation under bereavement to 
thanksgiving for the chastening ; how, finally, 
she sends him forth protected and strength- 
ened by her blessing. 

And now what shall I more say % I can 
only end as I began, by reminding you of 
that all-important truth which so closely 
concerns us all. The time is short ; death is 
approaching : the unseen world is never- 
ending. 

The advice and instructions which, 
throughout this lengthened course of lectures, 
have been offered you, have not been ad- 
dressed to you as mourners, so much as to 
dying men : not so much to those who were 
weeping for others, as for those who have 
need to watch over themselves. True, many 
of you may have been mourners ; and those 
who are not mourners yet, must soon expect 
to become so : but that which I have desired 



356 THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 

to bring home to your several hearts is the 
thought that others will soon have to mourn 
over you, — that you will be stricken down, 
and fade away, and give up the ghost, and 
your eyes be closed, and your limbs stiffen, 
and your shroud will be made for you, and 
you will be laid in your coffin, and your 
grave be dug, and your corpse lowered into 
it, and the soil be heaped up over you, and 
the green grass grow above you, and then 
you will be out of sight, and in a very few 
years you will be utterly forgotten. 

But your body will be raised again, and 
your soul will live ; will be living when the 
world in which it dwelt has ceased to be ; 
will be living myriads upon myriads of ages 
hence, in joy or woe unutterable. 

And the present is all that is your own ; 
and even that is not yours, but God's. Are 
you then giving Him His own, and surren- 
dering yourselves, body and soul, without 
hesitation or reservation, to His service'? 
There is no hope for you but through God's 
mercies in Christ Jesus, and those mercies, 
though granted freely, are only granted on 
conditions ; — faith and obedience. There is 



THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 357 

no other way. Neither is there salvation to 
be found in any other in all the Universe of 
God. Life and death have been placed 
before you ; and, by the most solemn act of 
your lives, you have chosen life, and the path 
that leads to it. Are you walking in it, or 
are you not 1 Are you seeking an excuse to 
quit it % Have you already deserted it % 
Having deserted it, have you discovered 
your error, and are you now, with bitter 
remorse, endeavouring to retrace your steps % 
These are questions which you must 
answer for yourselves, — which no one can 
answer for you. No one can tell what the 
real state of a fellow-sinner may be. But 
this we can tell you of a certainty, that that 
narrow path is the only path that leads to 
life ; that he that walketh thereon shall never 
die ; and that whatever Satan may insinuate, 
or the false, deluding world suggest, therein 
alone is peace to be found, — that peace which 
is but another name for reconciliation, 
through the blood of the Cross, with a 
justly-offended God ; — that therein alone the 
Lord will give His people the blessing of 
peace, — peace, whose "work" is "righteous- 



358 THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. 

ness," and whose " effect" is " quietness and 
assurance for ever/' — peace which passeth all 
understanding, — peace, which the world can 
neither give nor take away. 

" Grant, Lord, that as we are baptized 
into the death of Thy blessed Son our Saviour 
Jesus Christ, so by continually mortifying 
our corrupt affections we may be buried with 
Him; and that, through the grave and gate 
of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrec- 
tion; for His merits, Who died, and was 
buried, and rose again for us, Thy Son Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Amen" 



J. T, WALTERS, PRINTER, CAMBRIDGE. 



NEW WORKS. 



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